Reading through my peers blog postings on their own personal feelings about home, I have come to understand that many of us feel the same way. For many here, home is more than just the four walls that keep us warm, and that home is more of a feeling than a physicality. Like others, I have found that home hold the potential to physically change, and yet remain the same; in essence, home can have multiple forms because it is the emotions that spaces bring, rather than the physical locations, that constitute home for many people. I have come to understand that I am fortunate in feeling that I have multiple homes, and that I have felt at home in the many spaces in which I have lived throughout my life. I now understand that although many of us feel a similar way about what constitutes a home, my peers and I have all taken various routes to arrive at this understanding. We have all had different influences, and hold differing values, and yet a majority of us hold true that a home is a space which brings comfort and the feeling of being content.

The differences that I did see, were things that come from individual upbringing, and ones own history. I feel as though our differences are not that stark but rather a variation of opinion. I think that although many of us found the sense of home outside of the four walls in which we lived, it was specifically what brought us home that was often different. It just goes to show that the definition of home to various people is often a spectrum different meanings.

Commonalities:

• home is represented through feelings and memories
• home has the potential to change and evolve, and thus is not necessarily one specific place
• home is a feeling of belonging somewhere
• home is where one can feel culturally connected
• country of origin
• a place unknown

Differences:

• the idea of home as associated with music and art
• home as being frightening or sad
• trying to find the meaning of home, and teaching oneself what home could be
• pursuit of reality

I fully enjoyed reading everyones blog postings this week, and I really appreciated everyones ability to display personal emotions and experiences – something that isn’t always easy to do. This assignment was really thought provoking and eye opening for me, as I had not really thought about how I personally would define home. This is a very interesting Ted Talk, which I believe a Chloe Lee posted on her blog. I’m glad I got to watch this! I liked this idea of being able to choose ones sense of home, and that we are no longer limited to only one definition.

Works Cited:

Pico Iyer: Where is home?. TED Global. TED, 2013. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.

Lee, Chloe. “2.2 Home,” My Exploration of Canadian Literature, https://blogs.ubc.ca/470chloe/2016/09/28/2-2-home/. Accessed 3 Oct 2016.