I’m honestly amazed at how eye-opening this assignment was. People really opened up and shared lots about themselves that gave me an additional insight on how to view people. Home is so much more of a fickle topic than I realized, and I even surprised myself writing my own blog post about it. The word, when heard in passing, is such a casual word I don’t think much about, but this class is really forcing us to dive deep within our memories and values to determine aspects about ourselves and surroundings.

There are a few things that I found in common within many of people’s ideas of home, regardless if they don’t have it, have it, or had it.

These are:

-Time: How long we stayed in the location.

-Safety: Varying widely from physical harm to social judgement, home is somewhere we feel safe.

-Family: Having people we love and trust surround us—parents, siblings, partners, pets…

-Friends: Being in the proximity of others that share our value—teams, social hobbies, religion…  

-Building/Room/Space: Somewhere we can make our own. This varied widely from ownership of property to hanging things on walls.

-Nation: From a single nation to many, a nation we can say we belong to.

-Familiar population/scenery: Nature, urban landscapes, nostalgic places, a location we can remember even after years away.

-Relaxation: Somewhere we can kick out shoes off and let go.

The differences didn’t come from what people thought of home—we seemed to have that down pretty consistent—but of which value we weighed more than others. There are people who needed to customize their room so it didn’t feel so lonely, and although this is a sentiment that I agree with, I’ve never been the type of person to hang up pictures or decorate.

I think time had the biggest factor in determining people’s view of home. They say, “we want what we can’t have”, and it was tragically funny how true that was. People that stayed in the same place their entire life didn’t feel much sense of identity because they felt that they didn’t have much to compare it to, so they would like to move and experience different homes. On the other hand, there are lots of people that moved multiple times at a young age, that don’t feel like they stayed anywhere long enough to belong, and just want to find a place to settle.

Something that was incredibly clear when reading these posts is how helpless we were as children (here’s an interesting blog post about respecting children’s autonomy). Most of the class are in their early twenties and we’ve only (relatively) recently came into control of our own lives. So much of what we define as home was forced upon us as children, and I loved reading about what people are doing with their newly gained autonomy. I hope one day when I’m raising children of my own, I can provide for them a place where they can think back with fondness rather than confusion.

Citations

Ingraham, Christopher. “Moving as a Child Can Change Who You Are as an Adult.” Medium, Washington Post, 17 June 2016, medium.com/@washingtonpost/moving-as-a-child-can-change-who-you-are-as-an-adult-c40e46740156.

Sara. “Freedom Is Not Conditional: 8 Ways to Tell If You’Re Respecting Your Child’s Autonomy.” Happiness Is Here, WordPress, 16 May 2017, happinessishereblog.com/2017/05/freedom-not-conditional-8-ways-tell-youre-respecting-childs-autonomy/.