What does it mean to leave home? A home is the familiar, the comfortable, and the common. At some point, everyone must take action in the direction away from that home. The act of leaving it is to confront something new, step out of your realm of familiarity, and experience self-growth as a result. That self-growth is what makes the trouble of leaving worthwhile. 

When a person or character leaves the comfort of home to experience something new, be it a school, a country, or even the grocery store for that matter, they are pushing their boundaries. It’s by pushing those boundaries and expectations of ourselves that we can learn about the world and develop as people. In the real world, these new experiences can come from everywhere and can have positive or negative results. For instance, perhaps someone applies for their dream job or moves to a new state but gets rejected or suffers financially. Or maybe they did the same but found success and happiness. In both cases, they stepped out of their realm of familiarity, left home, and learned something from it. Imagine if they had never applied for that job, moved to a new state, or even changed their routine. Not trying is what holds people back from their potential. If it goes right, then all the better, but if it all goes wrong, experiencing failure can teach a lot and prepare someone for the next obstacle. 

Characters in fictional stories and films almost always follow this same pattern of behavior and learn a lesson from it. Take a story like Finding Nemo: Marlin, an anxious clownfish, has to leave the safety of the reef to find his son. Marlin previously had no intention to ever venture from home; leaving that sanctuary for what lies beyond in the unknown ocean was what he feared the most, but when humans take Nemo away from him, he has to move past his fear to get back his son. Everything he encounters afterward is new to him. He faces trials and near-death experiences, but despite his struggles, he learns to be less fearful of the unknown and to trust his son. Without the initial departure from home and facing the unfamiliar, Marlin would never have had the character development that is essential to the plot of the movie. As human beings and not animated fish, we face similar fears and anxieties every day, as well as more pressing trials throughout life. It’s up to us to push forward despite the struggles; to push our boundaries and learn what we are capable of doing.

To illustrate this concept, you can find the photograph provided. Perched above a rocky shore, we are safe and soft in a comfortable place: home. But it is small and confined, and we must look to the ground below to move on, to experience, to grow. Not to say that we should all go jumping off cliffs, but we should consider the possibilities of what we might discover by leaving home.

We find this parallel in our lives in both the mundane and the extraordinary. By stepping out of our own home and approaching the new and uncertain, however big or small, we gain knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. We learn what we are and are not capable of and grow as human beings. Leaving home is the first step to pushing our boundaries and discovering who we are. 

Sources:

Stanton, Andrew, director. Finding Nemo. Disney, 2003.

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash (General Public License)