A nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that has been loved and then lost; “the love that remains”.

That’s the definition of Saudade that introduced the word to me, in 2014. At the time I was feeling an intense pang for ‘home’, and Gaborone. An interesting duality, fellow human, I gotta tell you. Both home, and Gaborone stood for different things at that time because following my enrolment in boarding school at twelve-years-old, the idea of home began to divorce itself from Gaborone.

What does ‘home’ actually mean? Perhaps that’s a topic for a Friday Feels post.

A Portuguese poet by the name of Teixeira de Pascoas created a movement in Portugal called Saudosismo. At the heart of Saudosismo was Saudade. In an article written for Poetry International Web by Richard Zenith, the closest translation by de Pascoas of saudade was “longing, nostalgia, yearning” for something absent, but it is a feeling fraught with more emotional weight and affective intensity than corresponding words from English and other languages convey.”

“Saudade is a universal feeling; but only in the Lusitanian soul, it reaches the supreme heights of Poetry – containing a conception of life and existence.”

Teixiera de Pascoas

Reading that statement made me briefly revert to having primary school mindset – seeing people of Portuguese descent, and Portuguese-speaking people as show-offs. Turns out I was a little jealous because I wanted to understand this ‘weight’ the word sets on the soul better than I currently do.

As a result of saudade not having a direct English translation definitions have sprouted, rooted in the closest feeling that can be pinned to its source. There are words in mother tongues that cannot be translated into The Queen’s English – no shade, U.S.A. – and any attempt to, renders anyone to resemble a “Tall Boy” a.k.a. ‘Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tubeman’ (Family Guy), as they try to charade the word.

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you will miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.“

Azar Nafisi

Since I was a wee nugget, becoming a pilot was something I couldn’t see myself not pursuing. Airplanes, the floor of clouds at 13,000 ft, and the beautiful chaos airports choreographed were some of the elements that gave me an excitement I cannot describe. I began keeping tickets, and boarding passes as a means of keeping those moments – each meaning something different with each trip.

Music for me has the same effect that collecting boarding passes does. When Fall Out Boy released MANIA, I found myself listening to ‘Heaven’s Gate’ a lot more than the others. The memories of Savannah, adventures and shenanigans, took the stage in my head, and couldn’t believe anything else. I shared, in an Instagram post, that instead of music marrying itself to ideas of people, I marry songs to places every time. Aside: I call Instagram ‘Instahams’. Permit me from now on to call it that.

During the time spent in Savannah I learned the identifier, Third Culture Kid (TCK). It’s a name ascribed to individuals who spend a majority of their formative years outside their home country, and is explained further in this article by BBC. As I began to explore what it meant, and speak to my friends that described themselves as such, I found that glove fit me perfectly. In addition, I had found that I experience people, and circumstances ardently.

Experiences are uniquely yours.

The love that remains. With experiences uniquely yours, they root themselves to your heart to varying degrees, and ache in their own way when a memory is recollected. People go; you go. Places change, and so should you.

In ‘I Lived’, a One Republic song, they sing, “hope that you fall in love, and it hurts so bad – the only way you can know you gave it all you had.”

My understanding of Saudade so far, which I feel will evolve over time is: Saudade lies on the words you speak when you recollect a love -person or place – that you cannot return to. What is your understanding, fellow human?