Even better if you can provide your own understanding of its meaning.
Mine would be :
“Nothing kills a man as much as being forced to represent a country” (and err considering the context, I must stress it has nothing to do with the current US shitshow), by a WW1 soldier, illustrator and writer named Jacques Vaché.
For me it just means being forced into representing a group (national, of course, but maybe also social, racial, sexual, professional, any kind of group) or defining one’s identity only by reference to a group is to be avoided at all costs.
Note : Its not the same, imho, as engaging in a collective struggle or defense against a common oppression.
How about you?
“No matter where you go, there you are.”
Made absolutely no sense to me when I was younger. Now, I get that it means changing one’s location or situation in an effort to avoid something doesn’t work. You’re still you, you’re there, and the problem still exists. Obviously some situations can be improved by leaving them, so the statement isn’t completely correct, but there’s plenty of truth to it.
“You can never go home again” also used to bug me, because of course you can physically return to the places you grew up. But if you’ve been away a good while the place you grew up in might have changed, the people will have changed, and you will also have changed. Home will be where you have made a new life. Your old home will be like trying to put on a shoe you haven’t worn in a few years. Yeah, it fits, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not comfortable like it used to feel. Home isn’t there anymore. I kinda envy some people that I know who never left my hometown. They have the same friends, been hanging out for years, still get together for family stuff…but at the same time I’ve experienced a shitload more than they have. My original home doesn’t exist for me anymore.
“You can never go home again… but you can shop there.”
My wife struggles with that second one a lot and I wish I knew how to help her.
Ramble
She’s built up this golden fantasy of her childhood and where she’s from, and she blames so much of what I file away as “normal life bs” on where we live now. Every time we visit her hometown I see the same problems there that she blames on where we live.
She has a hard time seeing the benefits of where we live now because she grew up in a tight knit extended family that closed the gaps so to speak. But that extended family has drifted apart. People have grown up. The old matriarchs and patriarchs have passed. That same tight knit family doesn’t exist anymore in the way it used to.
She basically had a high quality, premade social group and support structure just handed to her growing up. She moved states and life events kept getting in the way of her building a new one. But she blames that on location rather than what is now a lack of effort. Issues she overlooked long ago (and still) with family are things she can’t let go of when faced with them in potential friends.
And ultimately, the loss of these things just brings her sadness and depression. She’s not in a state where she’s interested in trying to make it work beyond saying she wants to verbally. Pretty textbook depression but there’s complications right now in the way of her seeking help.
Apologies for the ramble/off my chest shit.
Sorry you and your wife are dealing with that. Kinda reminds me of an old saw: within two years of marriage you will move to within two miles of your mother in law. Sounds like maybe that’s what your wife was after with the support structure of family. FWIW “benefits” might be subjective…what one person considers beneficial may not have the same importance to another.