SALMON return to the river of their spawning; dogs travel hundreds of miles to return to their owners and human beings like to return to their roots. However, an exile's return far from being a dream come true often turns out to be another shattered illusion.
The evidence lies in what some removal companies say: that as many as 40 per cent of people who return to live in this country leave again, unable to settle. While some of the difficulties experienced by returned emigrants may be of a practical nature such as the inability to find work or a place to live, there are other psychological aspects which we, as a society, need to acknowledge.
I left Dublin in my mid 20s and spent over 10 years in London. During this time I did an MA in film and television studies, was a member of a newsreel group in a community cinema, gave birth to three children, worked as a primary school teacher in the area where I lived and became very involved in the local community. I was happy enough with my life there, but a trip home, an Irish music session, a photograph, of waves crashing onto a beach would all activate that latent desire in the pit of my soul, to return to the old sod, and so we did, all five of us.
Three years later, I feel that I have not yet left London behind, nor in fact have I arrived in Dublin but am instead floundering around somewhere in the middle of the Irish Sea. I am a displaced person in my own country, which is something I never quite expected to feel to this extent.
In recent times, emigration is seen to be a good thing. It's a way out of unemployment, an opportunity to see the world and acquire new skills. It has been a means of escaping a sexually repressive society and, from the Government's point of view, a way of bringing down the unemployment figures.
Unlike long ago it is easier these days to come home. Perhaps this is because people emigrate to countries closer by, for the cost of travel is less prohibitive. For whatever reason, nowadays people leave but many return, harbouring a hope or belief in their hearts that they have come back to where they really belong, but have they? I heard a story recently about a man from the southern part of the country who had worked as a miner for many years in a Welsh mining village. He became a well respected and well liked member of the community. He dreamed about coming back to live in Ireland - and did when the pit closed. He is now living at home on the farm, idle, depressed and displaced. There must be many like him.
Now I realise that over the many years I spent in London I had come to belong there rather than in the fantasised homeland of my birth and upbringing. Emigrants return as somewhat different people to those that left their native shore behind, and consequently I have found that the changes that have taken place within me have made it difficult to re integrate.
On top of all this, back at the ranch, life does not remain static. Events play a part in moulding the fabric of that culture, which I, like many other Irish people abroad, have often imagined myself to be an expert on. It seems that I was deluded. Despite keeping abreast of current affairs and gossip through reading the newspapers and trips home the way in which events filter through and affect people's thinking, produces subtleties and nuances in conversation.
Consequently, it's easy to feel like an outsider who is not fully tuned in to what is being talked about. Recently a friend at a party said that she knew how I felt. She had spent the 1970s living in Sweden and had missed being around for the Arms Trial. It was something she felt that she would never fully catch up on. I could say the same about the effects of the referendums of the 1980s or the beef tribunal.
Another aspect of this sense of displacement lies in the impossibility of being able to share experience acquired during the time spent abroad. People who have remained at home often appear defensive or disinterested in talk of a life spent elsewhere. I suppose that is inevitable but the result is that those years sometimes feel like lost years which have no relevance in the present situation.
THE POINT is that an emigrant expects to experience some sense of displacement living away from home. Moreover in major cities such as New York or London, to be displaced is in fact the norm. London is full of displaced people who have dreams of returning home. People find comfort and friendship in the sharing of the experience. To feel displaced in one's native land, comes as a rude awakening from a dream which held the promise of belonging.
However, in my desire to return home I often conceived of it as a haven in a tough world. This delusion intensified when at times I felt I had no power or voice in that adopted country. Fantasies about an idealised life back home obscured the memory of a sense of alienation experienced while living in that indigenous culture, a sense which may have led to a decision to leave in the first place. When I told a friend last week of my sense of displacement, she said but you were always a displaced person. She had a point, and maybe it has to be concluded that to be displaced is also an aspect of the human condition.
I have a friend in London who regularly has farewell parties. He maintains that Ireland is the place he wants to be, yet he always goes back to London to study or to work. I know how he feels. He's still there. At times I have even missed the pollution and the pit bull terriers.
The fact that nowadays it is easier for an emigrant to return home than before, does not mean that it is easily done. It is probably one of the most difficult experiences life throws up and one of the least documented in our culture, given that emigration itself is such an influential feature of Irish life.
