What Homesickness Taught Me About Life

I was 20 years old when I went to live in Paris, France, as an eager, yet also somewhat timid and socially awkward, college student. Ever since I had first read the Madeline books as a child, I had dreamed about Paris: quaint narrow streets, boulangeries full of steaming baguettes, couples embracing in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. What could be more romantic than this city? Where else could I absorb more fully art, literature, and history in the grand French cultural tradition? In short, what better way for a French major to spend her junior year of college than studying in Paris?

Although I was clearly pre-disposed to love Paris the moment my foot touched the vinyl floor in Charles de Gaulle airport, my affinity for all things French did little to avert the onset of homesickness only a few days after my arrival. Sure, the bread and cheese were great. Sure, the museums were fabulous and the whole city as picturesque as could be, but all that idyllic French-ness could not compensate for the fact that I was definitely not in America anymore.

I had been abroad before, but on just two occasions, both of them with a university-sponsored student group. On those trips, all our needs were taken care of, all our time decided for us, most of our meals provided. We moved en masse from the airport to the tour bus to the hotel to the sights and back to the tour bus, constantly under the watchful eye of our local tour guides and professor-chaperones. We were a bubble of America moving through a foreign landscape. In France, I was on my own with no chaperone or local guide. Cultural immersion was the point, but it was hard.

Overcoming Homesickness

I remember the night when my homesickness for America reached its zenith. I’d been in Paris for about a month, and, although I was having a pretty good time and excelling in my studies, I still wasn’t convinced I would stay past the end of the fall semester, so great was my desire to be back in a familiar environment. On the night in question, I sat in my little rented room in the apartment of a French family and made a list of all the things I missed about America. Taco Bell was at the top and a majority of the other 15 or so items were also food-related. Other items included the TV show Seinfield and David Letterman. (Incidentally, I wrote a series of haikus that year about David Letterman, manifesting both my devotion to and perhaps somewhat warped longing for this hilarious TV personality; separation definitely makes the heart grow fonder.)

I’m not sure how long I spent in my room that night, making that list and wallowing in my homesickness, but I do know that it was a pivotal moment in not only my year abroad, but also in my life. I realized, as I stared at my cathartic list, that I was never going to be happy living in Paris if all my energy was spent missing things from home. I suddenly understood that actively missing Taco Bell, peanut butter, root beer, and my favorite TV shows was not only futile, but was also a tremendous impediment to being able to enjoy the city and culture I had dreamed about for so long.

Focusing on my homesickness only made it worse, and as long as I was consumed with it, I was not free to experience anything else.

Once I realized this, I made a vow not to make any more lists of things I missed about America. I put away the list I had just written, keeping it to serve later as a reminder of my epiphany. I suddenly felt very grown up.

Over the next year, I still missed things about America. I still ate la vraie cuisine américaine at McDonald’s more than I care to admit, and I am ashamed to confess that I watched way too many episodes of Baywatch, dubbed into French, simply because it was American television. Even so, I made a concerted effort to embrace France, to open myself fully to this unique opportunity I had been given to experience another culture and let it change me.

Coming Home

When I came back to America almost a year later, I knew that I had indeed changed. I knew I would now be tempted to make a list of things I missed about France, and that I would always long for the fresh-baked baguettes, for the sidewalk cafes, for the old booksellers on the left bank with their view of Notre Dame. I couldn’t fully explain to others what I had experienced—nor why I wanted to eat Nutella with everything.

My year in Paris taught me that I could experience the richness of the world without the prohibitive homesickness I had felt those first few weeks there, because I could make myself at home wherever I was. It taught me that, the more we cling to the familiar and the past out of fear of the unknown, the more we deny ourselves the benefit and pleasure of the new and different. In giving up Taco Bell, I gained Nutella—and a new way of approaching the unknown in all areas of life. Which has proven to be a very worth-while trade.

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