The situation
Six months ago I moved abroad for a job. I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t expect to feel this homesick: I miss my family and friends, I spend most evenings scrolling through photos from home, and I still feel like a stranger here.
Your situation, reframed
AI interpretationHomesickness is a kind of grief for a whole way of life, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than brushed aside. The Stoic move is not to love home less, but to stop the remembered life there from crowding out the life you are actually living here. What matters most about you came with you, and this place is where your days are now being spent.
The dichotomy of control
AI interpretationYours to act on
- How much of each evening you spend in photographs of home
- Saying yes to invitations, and sometimes making the first one yourself
- Building small routines here: a class, a walk, a regular café, a team
- When and how you keep in touch with the people you miss
Not yours
- How quickly the new place starts to feel familiar
- What happens at home while you are away
- Whether new acquaintances become close friends
- The distance itself, and the cost and time of travelling back
The Stoics said
Verbatim from the source · full citationsSeneca, To Helvia, on Consolation 8
… Marcus Brutus thought that there was sufficient comfort in the thought that those who go into exile are permitted to carry their virtues thither with them. Though one might think that neither of these alone were able to console an exile, yet it must be confessed that when combined they have great power: for how very little it is that we lose! whithersoever we betake ourselves two most excellent things will accompany us, namely, a common Nature and our own especial virtue. …
Epictetus, Discourses 3.24 ¶10
… Then, when the appearance (of things) pains you, for it is not in your power to prevent this, contend against it by the aid of reason, conquer it: do not allow it to gain strength nor to lead you to the consequences by raising images such as it pleases and as it pleases. If you be in Gyara, do not imagine the mode of living at Rome, and how many pleasures there were for him who lived there and how many there would be for him who returned to Rome: but fix your mind on this matter, how a man who lives in Gyara ought to live in Gyara like a man of courage. And if you be in Rome, do not imagine what the life in Athens is, but think only of the life in Rome.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.39
Adapt thyself to the things with which thy lot has been cast: and the men among whom thou hast received thy portion, love them, but do it truly, sincerely.
What this means here
AI interpretationSeneca, To Helvia, on Consolation 8
This comes from a letter of consolation Seneca sent his mother from exile, to persuade her that his banishment was not the disaster she feared. He takes two older consolations, one from Varro and one from Brutus, and argues that together they are strong: wherever we go, we take with us the same Nature, the order of the world we live in, and our own character. Then he turns to the sky, the same sun, moon and stars overhead wherever you stand. He goes further than most people would in insisting how little is lost, and you can take his main point without agreeing with that. Your family and friends are still yours to love from a distance, and the person they love has not been left behind.
Translation note: Whithersoever we betake ourselves means wherever we go; especial virtue means your own particular good character; banishment means being sent into exile.
Epictetus, Discourses 3.24 ¶10
This discourse is addressed to someone pining for the city and friends they had left behind, and this part of it is practical. Epictetus accepts that the first pang when a picture of home appears is not in your power, but argues that you do not have to feed it: he warns against letting such images grow and carry you along, and asks instead how a person in this place ought to live here, with courage. Put your own places into his sentence. The photos you scroll each evening do the same work as the images he describes, keeping the old life vivid, and the useful question for tonight is how to live well where you actually are.
Translation note: Gyara was a small, barren Greek island to which Rome sent exiles, while Rome and Athens stand for the great cities a person might miss. The appearance means the picture or impression that forms in your mind.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.39
Marcus is writing a note to himself, and it has two halves. The first is about circumstances: fit yourself to the place and situation you are actually in, rather than measuring it endlessly against somewhere else. The second is about people: the ones you now live and work among are yours to love, and to love sincerely, not merely to put up with until you can go home. Your colleagues, neighbours and the people at the café are not stand-ins for your real life; they are part of it now, and treating them that way is often how a new place starts to feel like yours.
Translation note: Thy lot means the situation life has given you; thy portion means your share, here the people you find yourself among; men stands for people in general.
Taken together, the passages give homesickness its due without letting it run your life. What you loved at home is still loved, and the person who learned to love it came with you. But a life cannot be lived in photographs: the evenings here are the ones you actually have, and a place becomes home through ordinary repetition, the same faces each week, streets you learn, people you help. You can belong to where you came from and to where you are at the same time.
One action for today
AI interpretationPause before you judge · the discipline of assent
When the evening pull towards photos of home arrives, pause and name it: this is a picture of the old life, and tonight’s life is here. Set a fixed, generous time each week for calling the people you miss, so that contact becomes something to look forward to rather than something you graze on all evening. Then spend one evening you would have spent scrolling on something that ties you to where you live, such as a class, a club, a volunteering shift or the same café table each week. If the homesickness has settled into a low mood that will not lift, talk to a doctor or counsellor; getting support is part of settling in, not a failure at it.
A line to carry
“… no place of banishment can be found in the whole world in which man cannot find a home.”
— Seneca, To Helvia, on Consolation 8