Querencia: The Spanish Word for the Place Where You Feel Emotionally Strong, Like Home
Feeling safe, bullrings, Hemingway, unique experiences in distant countries
Today's phrase is a wonderful word in both phonetics and meaning. It comes from Spanish.
Querencia.
Querencia is a place where a person feels safe, happy, and strong, just like at home. Being able to stay as yourself, feeling safe and content. The word comes from the Spanish verb "querer," which means "to desire."
Paradoxically, in bullfighting, querencia is the place in the ring where the bull feels strong and safe.
Ernest Hemingway's 1932 nonfiction book Death in the Afternoon, a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting, describes the querencia:
A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring, a preferred locality...It is a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.
Is querencia a physical place? Does it have to be?
I don’t think so.
You can feel querencia in doing something you like and feel in the flow state.
I have a very clear memory of querencia. Years ago, I went to Thailand alone to present at a meeting. For the first time in my life, I was going abroad alone and about to make a presentation to more than a hundred senior executives in a language that was not my native. I experienced many firsts and difficulties.
I worked very hard during the busiest five days of my life. After everything was over, I felt so relaxed that danced alone for hours to the same songs in my hotel room. It was an evening that I still remember very clearly and happily.
I was almost merged with the music's rhythm, alone in a distant country, if not the world, but I felt completely at home. I wished it would never end.
Writing in the flow state or reading a page-turner novel gives me the feeling querencia, the moments when I'm grateful to be in the world.