Echoes of Love and Belonging

"We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are."

– Mahmoud Darwish (2013). “Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems”, p.31, Univ of California Press

Patriotism. What a big (yet cringe) word. What would you do for your country? What do you stand for in your country? What does it mean to be patriotic?

The feeling of absence and displacement ties my works together, and it is the process of finding oneself within after being uprooted to finally coming into terms with my love for a newfound home. Growing up as a second-generation immigrant, there was a constant tension between nationalism and identity. The reminders and labelling both at home and in school led to the lack of rootedness and ground. It grew to that of denial, avoidance, and pretence. However, you can never run from home, as you carry it within. How do you run away from yourself? You carry all the happenings you experienced, you carry all the emotions that you feel, and you carry the life that you lived. Where do you truly belong? This ideation is not a binary, neither is it a polarity. Belonging to or relating to one does not seek to deny the other and vice versa. Out of the country, you seek the home within. At home, you are grounded.

I love my country (2022) is the point of acceptance in this love. A confrontation with the ostensible contradiction between political position and that of patriotism is also evident in this work. How much are you able to speak up and speak out? Historically there have been many that gave up their comfort and facets of their being for their morals and righteousness to stand up for what is right, out of their love for their country. They are, respectfully so, patriots.

Political scientist, Stephen Nathanson defines patriotism as having a special affection for one’s own country, sense of personal identification with the country, special concern for the well-being of the country and willingness to sacrifice to promote the country’s good (Nathanson, 1993). This personal identification is expressed in explicit feelings, not only in pride of one’s country’s merits and achievements, but also in shame for its lapses or crimes, when they are acknowledged, rather than denied. With the special concern for one’s country, comes the willingness to sacrifice to promote the country’s good. Our differentiated political perspectives, arguably, are just that of different means of loving our nation, our people, and our home.

But -

Why has it come to that loving your country becomes a brave thing to do?