It Is Good to Look Homewards

There is an old Welsh proverb, teg yw edrych tuag adref, which means “it it good to look homewards.” We should look homewards because it is our place in the world, and it is the place that we are responsible for tending. When we neglect our home for the sake of chasing after glory or vendettas against other governments, our home naturally starts to fall into disrepair and ruin. The danger of becoming entangled in conflicts on the other side of the world is not only that it needlessly wastes our resources and costs us lives while inflicting devastation and death on hundreds of thousands of innocents, but that it also causes us to ignore the rot that has set in here at home. Like a man consumed with the vanities of the world, a country preoccupied with global “leadership” or “greatness” or any other foolish distraction can no longer be mindful of rightly ordering its own life and spirit. We forget ourselves and so lose ourselves in the empty pursuit of pomp and domination. The first step in correcting this disorder is to look homewards and give up the vain pursuits that have led us into the ditch time and time again. It is good to look homewards, and having looked we then need to come back home to attend to the many things we have neglected here for decades.