Close to home?

Reader question:

Please explain “close to home”, as in this sentence: “In a time of rapid globalization, distant challenges and distant threats are felt close to home.”

My comments:

Globalization brings people closer together, that’s why.

What once distant is now felt close, for example, as airplanes make it possible for you to have a meeting in New York today, and another meeting in London tomorrow. What’s once far away and disconnected is now connected and “close to home”.

Home is, of course, where we live. If something happens at home and to our family members, it has a bigger effect on us than what happens to other people elsewhere, especially far away.

Take traffic accidents, for instance. When we read the news that, say, last year, a certain large number of people got killed on the road worldwide, it has an effect on us but the effect may not be big and devastating, not as if one of our friends got hit on the road and lost a leg or something like that.

In the former example, road related deaths worldwide, though a large number, sounds like a statistic, a mere number, but in the latter example when our close friend whom we saw just the other day got hit, the effect on us is direct and therefore more acute.

What happens to our friend feels much closer to home because of our relationship and connection.

Let’s take another example. Last week, 24 tourists from Liaoning Province died while visiting Taiwan after their bus caught fire. Their bus driver and local guide were also killed.

The news hit us hard because Taiwan has recently been a tourist hot spot for mainland travelers. The news would’ve hit you harder still, though, if, for example, you’ve just returned from a similar trip a month ago. It would’ve hit you harder if, say, you yourself are a bus driver or a tourist guide or if you are from Liaoning Province.

In short, the closer you feel you are connected to the event, the greater impact the news of the accident will have on you.

In other words, it will hit closer to home.

Or it feels closer to home.

Here are recent media examples of situations where things hit or feel close to home, i.e. touching and affecting us directly and deeply:

1. Later this month, at a gala evening ceremony in London, this year’s $1.7 million Templeton Prize will be awarded to 86-year-old Canadian Catholic philosopher and activist Jean Vanier. The annual prize – more lucrative than the Nobel prizes – “honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.”

For Vanier, it all began in 1964, when, after serving in the British and Canadian Royal Navies, he chose to act meaningfully on his deeply held Christian beliefs. Hearkening to the call of Jesus “to help the least of these my brothers,” Vanier befriended two institutionalized men with mental disabilities and invited them to live at his home in Trosly-Breuil, a small town north of Paris.

Today, that heroic act of Christian kindness has grown into a vast, international network of communities where people with and without developmental challenges live, work and strive together. Collectively, the 147 utopian societies in 35 countries are called L’Arche – as in, Noah’s Ark. Vanier himself stills lives in the Trosly-Breuil community and avows that he has received far more from his remarkable neighbors, men and women with disabilities, than he has given to them.

“They have brought me so much over the past 50 years, and have taught me more than all those teachers and professors in schools and universities that I have attended,” Vanier said upon learning he’d won the Templeton Prize. “They have taught me about what it means to be human.”

Vanier’s words hit close to home for me because I have relatives with Down Syndrome, as well as a pair of newfound friends who have a lovely baby girl with it. Over the years, I’ve received such a disproportionate amount of love from Down Syndrome relatives and friends; it’s left me wondering why that might be. Vanier, I believe, offers us some compelling answers.

“The wonderful thing about people with disabilities is that when someone important comes, they don’t care,” he told a reporter recently. “They care about the relationship.”

“They are essentially people of the heart,” Vanier explained at a press conference in London. “When they meet others they do not have a hidden agenda for power or for success. Their cry, their fundamental cry, is for a relationship, a meeting heart to heart.”

- People of the Heart, by Michael Guillen, USNews.com, May 7, 2017.

2. Paris may be miles away, but when the City of Light cries, tears are shed across the ocean and their horror is felt close to home.

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Professor Michelle Cheyne, a dual citizen of the United States and France, was not merely heartbroken when she heard the news of the attacks in Paris on Friday, but “heartsick.”

Cheyne’s son Max, 19, goes to university in Paris and she has close ties with her in-laws in the city. There are also UMass students studying in France.

“My heart aches and it’s sick,” Cheyne said. “I felt sick to my stomach.”

Cheyne said her son was unharmed. She was also able to verify that two UMass Dartmouth students studying in France — one in Grenoble and one in Lyons — were conformed safe.

At UMass’ five campuses, a total of 26 students are studying in France, including 16 in Paris. All are safe, according to John Hoey, assistant chancellor for Strategic Communication, Media Relations and Special Projects at UMass Dartmouth.

Being a dual citizen, Cheyne travels often to France. She said she returned just a few weeks ago and is heading back to Paris to be with her son for Thanksgiving. She said they’ll either dine out or have a turkey sandwich to pay homage to their American home.

- Paris attacks hit close to home for locals, HeraldNews.com, November 14, 2017.

3. Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday highlighted steps being taken by law enforcement to increase security around Massachusetts and downplayed any connection between the attacker responsible for this weekend’s mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub and the brothers who carried out the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old who opened fire at gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday morning, killing 49 and injuring 53 others, referred to the Tsarnaev brothers as his “homeboys” during one of three 911 calls during the attack, according to the FBI, which also said “all evidence collected to date shows no connection between Mateen and the Tsarnaev brothers.”

Baker said the reference to the marathon bombings had been addressed at the top of a call Sunday night with national security officials.

“At this point in time, there’s no reason to believe that there’s much to that other than he referenced it as something that had happened. It doesn’t appear that he had any direct connection to that at all,” Baker said.

Joined by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Public Safety Secretary Daniel Bennett, Baker spoke to the media late Monday morning, conveying his sympathy for the victims of an attack that he said hit “particularly close to home for me” because of his gay brother.

After speaking with his brother and other gay friends on Sunday, Baker said they felt that just as acceptance of members of the LGBT community appears to be improving in the country, something happens to the community spurred by hatred.

“There’s no room for that here in the commonwealth or anywhere in society, and we should of course do all we can to resist that,” Baker said.

- Gov. Baker: No connection apparent between Orlando shooter, marathon bombers, TauntonGazette.com, June 13, 2016.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.