Home. A term that everyone uses with little thought and depth. A term so normalized and conditioned by society that I wonder if anyone understands what ‘home’ is. Of course that also depends on one’s view of the word. But, it is a term that people throw around so offhandedly without putting any thought into it because there’s an assumption that ‘home’ is obvious. It is common sense and it doesn’t need to be defined. In a way, that’s true. A feeling doesn’t always become defined. Abstractions can’t always be understood. But it’s a term that one should be intimately aware of. A term that people have put so little thought in despite its importance. What words would be synonymous with ‘home’? Security? Comfort? A Dwelling? Family? Background? Haven? All of these are synonym to ‘home’. Yet, what do these synonyms bring to the table but more words to define? Why do we need synonyms for the word ‘home’? Too often do I use the word ‘home’ instead of house only because I don’t need people asking me why. Are you not comfortable at home? Where is home then? Questions that dig deep into a personal boundary that I don’t allow others to enter. Conforming to society’s wishes isn’t always negative, it is merely a means to self-preservation. Too often do people throw the word ‘home’ around without truly thinking about what that means for them. It turns the word into a cheap accessory that anything can be. It’s used so casually, that instead of somewhere special in a person’s heart, that it becomes a cheap accessory for the bustling of society. Seldom do they stop to think. Is this where I want to be? Is this where I belong? A pause, before bursting full speed into their next societal obligation.
Home would be no material place. It’s just a space in the most abstract form of the word where I return to in order to feel as though I belong somewhere. It is an opaque, translucent and transparent place. A place of the mind. Whatever I want it to be. Home is merely a concept. A story in which we tell ourselves we belong. Home is a memory, home is a person. There are plenty of ways to define home, but what does that mean?
Maybe we can understand it by comparison? Homeless. Immediately, waves of impressions show up; jobless; on the streets; without an abode. What interests me is that the synonyms for homeless includes the words migrants and vagabonds. Migrants and Nomads being similar, they travel from place to place. Are they searching for a home? Vagabonds always struck me as a sort of adventurer. Are they looking for a home as well? Or are they just moving and exploring to see different places? Are they there for the adventure? Eventually these people are going to have to settle down, whether that be due to old age, or the lack of excitement, or the lack of choice. For Nomads.. perhaps home just means being together with their family. It doesn’t matter the location.
So we have people who understand home as a location, we have people who understand home as people (a sort of makeshift, uncertain idea of it), then there are those who never felt as though they have had a home. Maybe their memories are the only places where they can go to feel the concept of home. Or maybe it’s something else.
At first, we only knew ourselves. I’m using the word ‘know’ very loosely. As a baby, we might not be as functionable as we are now, but we were comfortable with ourselves. There was no social convention binding us yet because we don’t quite understand it. At that point, we’re “at home” with ourselves. Then social convention comes around affecting us. Family becomes our sense of home. But at the same time, being in a materialistic society as it is, home becomes a location. So say, we believe that location is ‘home’. When that gets burned down, we’re left without a home. Walking through the streets, we keep searching. What is home? Is it someone we can depend on? Because at the point, that might be how it feels. Distrusting of others, but desperate for a home, we accept their kindness(?). Perhaps we eventually become best friends, perhaps lovers. Who knows? What I’m trying to say is that a person becomes what we call home. Then, what if we become betrayed? Not only do we no longer have a location or a person to be comfortable with, we lose our ‘home’. The place where we feel we belong. Short and not very transitional, but I assume you see the pattern. Eventually, we get to know ourselves because that seems to be the only thing we can be comfortable with- the only thing we trust that won’t, can’t abandon us. Although I don’t think the mind is where it ends, it is a start. It begs an interesting take on the term ‘home’ in sports where the goal or the end point is ‘home’ and the animal’s definition of where it returns to by instinct. Perhaps our goal is to go home, and although we try to return instinctively, life is a part of the journey and until that is over… we are not home. Hopefully, self-awareness will eventually bring us closer to home.
Work Cited:
Switchfoot. “”This Is Home” – THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA” N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2016.
“Our Story | Musqueam.” N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.
“Reclaiming the Indigenous Soul – WisdomBridge.” N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.