My Harbour Is Where My Heart Is
An unexpected encounter as I was leaving my home brought a curious comparison with a butterfly. Those few words stayed with me, raising deeper questions about freedom, belonging and what it truly means to feel at home. When do we leave because something calls us forward, and when have we finally found somewhere we genuinely want to stay?
10/8/20266 min read
My Harbour Is Where My Heart Is
On a butterfly, freedom and what it truly means to feel at home
Years ago, on the day I left my home for the last time, something happened that has stayed with me ever since.
I was already sitting in my car, out on the road, ready to drive away. The house was behind me. A chapter of my life had come to an end.
My neighbour from across the road must have noticed I was leaving. Suddenly, she came rushing out of her house and ran towards my car. I wound down the window.
She looked at me and said:
‘You're just like a butterfly. You settle somewhere for a while, then, just like that, you're off again.’
It was only a handful of words, yet I have never forgotten them.
Not so much because she had compared me to a butterfly, but because of the way she said it. It was as though she wasn't talking about my departure at all, but about who I was. As though she could see straight through the surface and recognise something that usually remains hidden.
I felt understood. And, at the same time, rather exposed.
She didn't ask any questions. She wasn't interested in where I was going or why I was leaving. She simply seemed to be stating something she had come to understand.
And deep down, I knew she had touched upon something essential.
What Had She Really Seen?
We tend to understand people through the circumstances of their lives. Their work, their relationships, where they live and the experiences that have shaped them. We associate identity with the visible threads of continuity running through a person's life.
Someone settles in a place, builds a life, gathers memories and gradually becomes part of their surroundings. Leaving, then, means saying goodbye to something that has become part of who they are.
But not everyone experiences belonging in quite the same way.
You can be genuinely present somewhere, form meaningful connections, build memories and still reach a point where you feel it is time to move on.
A butterfly doesn't land on a flower to claim it as its own. For that moment, it is simply there, entirely present. And when it takes flight again, its departure doesn't make that moment any less real.
Yet there was something in her words that went beyond a simple observation about freedom.
‘Then, just like that, you're off again.’
It was that phrase, ‘just like that’, which struck me most.
Because what feels like a perfectly natural next step to the person leaving may come as a complete surprise to someone left behind.
Where one person sees a chapter that has reached its conclusion, another may feel the story was nowhere near finished.
Without intending to, she had touched upon an uncomfortable aspect of independence: the possibility that the freedom we experience for ourselves may feel very different to those around us.
The Other Side of Freedom
Throughout my life, I have chosen change more than once. New places, new circumstances, new possibilities. Not always because there was anything wrong with what I had, but because I sensed that a particular chapter had run its course or that something new had come my way.
It would be easy to describe that as independence.
But independence and freedom are not quite the same thing.
Someone who refuses to put down roots may appear wonderfully independent. Yet beneath that independence there may also lie a difficulty with truly staying.
Equally, someone who clings to the familiar at all costs may feel secure, even though the life they are living no longer reflects the person they have become.
Both can be expressions of freedom. But both can just as easily be driven by fear.
And that brings us to a question that is far harder to answer than it first appears.
Am I leaving because there is somewhere I want to go, or because I no longer want to be where I am?
The distinction matters enormously.
From the outside, both look exactly the same. Someone packs their belongings, closes the door and walks away.
But what is happening within can be entirely different.
One person is drawn towards something. Another is avoiding something they would rather not face. And sometimes the two impulses are so closely intertwined that even we struggle to tell them apart.
Those who are forever moving on don't necessarily know where they are heading. Just as those who spend their entire lives in one place haven't necessarily found what they were looking for.
So the question isn't simply whether we have the courage to leave.
Do we also have the courage to ask ourselves why?
Because anyone who genuinely wishes to follow their own path must be willing to distinguish between what draws them forward and what drives them away.
That takes honesty with oneself, particularly when the answer challenges the image we would prefer to have of who we are.
When Does Somewhere Become Home?
You can buy a house. You can choose where to live. You can build a life that appears to offer everything necessary for happiness.
And still feel that something is missing.
Then again, you can arrive somewhere entirely unfamiliar and almost immediately experience a strange sense of recognition. As though something has quietly fallen into place, without your being able to explain why.
That feeling doesn't have to be connected to a particular place.
It can arise through another person, in an unexpected encounter or during a conversation in which you feel understood without having to explain yourself.
Sometimes it comes through the work you do, when your abilities and your aspirations finally come together.
And sometimes it arrives in a moment of stillness, when you realise there is nowhere else you would rather be.
We often confuse feeling at home with being settled.
But living somewhere and belonging somewhere are two very different things.
The first is a circumstance.
The second is an experience.
And no amount of property, security or time spent in one place can manufacture that feeling.
What the Butterfly Taught Me
Over the years, I have often found myself thinking back to that encounter.
Not because my neighbour had somehow provided an answer to the question of who I am, but because, with a single image, she had raised a question that reached far beyond my departure that day.
What actually makes us stay?
Is it the comfort of what we have built? A sense of responsibility? The fear of losing something? Or the genuine desire to be exactly where we are?
For a long time, I had associated freedom primarily with being able to choose my own direction. Not being bound by other people's expectations. Not having to remain somewhere simply because I had once chosen to be there.
But if freedom really means having a choice, then staying must be a choice too.
Someone who constantly needs to leave in order to feel free may be no freer than someone who is afraid to leave at all.
That realisation changed what the butterfly meant to me.
Its freedom lies not merely in its ability to fly away, but also in not being compelled to keep flying.
The question, then, is no longer how far we can travel, how many places we can discover or how many new chapters we can begin.
The real question is how we recognise the moment when we no longer feel the need to move on.
My Harbour Is Where My Heart Is
There is a saying of my own that I have carried with me for many years:
‘My harbour is where my heart is.’
It is only when I place those words alongside my neighbour's observation that I fully appreciate how closely they are connected. She was describing the way I move through life. My own words speak of what gives that movement direction. After all, a harbour is more than somewhere a boat comes alongside. It is a place where a journey finds its destination, where an anchor can be lowered without the feeling of being held captive.
A harbour you are forbidden to leave is no harbour at all. Yet a ship that never wishes to come into port will never know what it means to arrive home. Somewhere between those two lies, for me, the essence of freedom: being able to leave without running away from something, and being able to stay without losing yourself. Not because circumstances hold you there, but because you feel a genuine connection in your heart.
My neighbour saw a butterfly that day. Someone who settles for a while, becomes part of a place and then takes flight once more. What she couldn't see was the inner movement behind it. I don't necessarily leave because I am unwilling to stay. I leave when I sense that where I am is no longer where I am meant to be.
And so I understand her words differently now. The butterfly doesn't have to spend its life in flight to remain free. Perhaps its freedom finds its deepest meaning when it can finally settle somewhere without longing to fly away again.
My harbour is where my heart is. And when I find that harbour, there will be nowhere else I need to go.
Paul Hager