Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world

“Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.” Thus wrote John Cheever, the great chronicler of modern longing — a man who understood that the ache of exile is not merely about geography, but about the human soul itself. In these words, Cheever does not belittle the feeling of homesickness; rather, he reveals its universality. For homesickness, he suggests, is not only the sorrow of being far from one’s native place, but the eternal yearning of the human spirit — the restless hunger for belonging, for wholeness, for a place or moment that seems forever just out of reach.

The origin of this quote lies in Cheever’s lifelong meditation on displacement and nostalgia. Though he was an American writer, his stories often read like elegies for something lost — a vanished innocence, a vanished home. He wrote of suburban families and city dwellers alike who lived among comfort yet felt estranged, haunted by an invisible absence. To Cheever, homesickness was not a passing sentiment but a condition of existence. The heart, he believed, remembers a home that it can never quite return to — whether that home is childhood, love, faith, or a sense of harmony with the world.

In the ancient world, this feeling was known well. The Greeks called it nostos, the pain of longing for home, and from it we derive the very word nostalgia. In Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus spends twenty years yearning for Ithaca — not merely for his homeland, but for the peace and identity that home represents. His journey is not simply across the sea, but through the desolation of separation. Yet when at last he returns, the Ithaca he finds is not the Ithaca he remembers. So it is with all who are homesick: what they long for is not a place, but a memory, an essence, something eternal that no landscape can contain.

Cheever’s insight is that this homesickness afflicts nearly all people, whether they know it or not. The farmer gazes toward the city; the city dweller dreams of the countryside. The young long for freedom; the old long for youth. Even the successful yearn for a simplicity they have lost. In every heart there is an echo of another world — a place of peace, of meaning, of belonging. This is why he says that half the world is homesick all the time: because to be human is to live between two worlds — the one we inhabit, and the one we imagine we have lost.

Consider the story of Vincent van Gogh, who spent much of his life wandering from town to town, painting with desperate passion, yet always feeling adrift. In his letters to his brother Theo, he often spoke of a yearning that no success could soothe — a longing for connection, for acceptance, for home. He found beauty in every corner of creation, yet peace in none. His art, vibrant and alive, was the voice of his homesickness — a cry from the soul searching for a place it could finally rest. In this way, van Gogh’s life, like Cheever’s words, becomes a mirror of humanity itself: brilliant, creative, yet perpetually exiled from contentment.

But Cheever’s wisdom carries not despair, but understanding. To recognize homesickness as universal is to find compassion — to see that beneath every person’s striving lies the same quiet ache. The exile in a foreign land and the businessman in his high-rise tower suffer the same longing, though they name it differently. It is the heart’s desire to return — not to a physical home, but to a state of being where one feels whole, connected, at peace. To live with this awareness is to treat others gently, for all are travelers on the same endless road toward belonging.

So, my listener, take this teaching and hold it close: do not fear your homesickness — honor it. It is the sign that you remember something sacred, that your soul still reaches for the light it once knew. Let it make you humble, compassionate, and alive. Build what home you can in this world — not only for yourself, but for others who wander. Speak kindly, love deeply, create beauty, and wherever you stand, let that place become a refuge. For though the ache of exile may never fully fade, every act of goodness, every moment of connection, brings us closer to that lost home we all seek — the home not made of stone or wood, but of spirit, memory, and love eternal.