Common assumptions regarding what a home is:
- Home is not necessarily a physical place; rather, it is the people that make you feel comfortable and safe
- Emulating a sense of home in a foreign place is easier said than done; sometimes home isn’t something that can be replicated.
- Home is a feeling of warmth and certainty
- Home is the place where the people you love provide you with assurance, love, and support
While we all have our own definitions of home, what I noticed most is that home is subjective. It isn’t tied down to one specific meaning, person, or place. Home is something that is special to each of us; it is something that pertains to our subjectivity and brings about immense feelings of comfort, safety, contentment, and freedom. What I predominantly took away from the blogs I read is that home is not just a physical place. Oftentimes we automatically associate home with the physical, and we in turn, neglect to recognize that home is more than just a structure. It is more than a room, a house, a building – it is the people we love to spend our time with; it is the people we choose to be surrounded by.
Works Cited
“Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes – Home” Youtube. Youtube, 17 May 2010. 15 February 2016.
Hi Neia,
I like the point you make about home not always being a physical place. This is something I also noticed as a common theme among our classmates’ blogs, and yet also something that I hadn’t really considered before. When people ask me where home is, my first answer is usually the city in which I live. On the other hand, usually when I think about my home I think about my house and the other people who live there. Only upon further reflection did I also realize that home is so much more than that, and I think I’ve become more grateful for the things and people that complete my sense of home. I wonder if others had this same realization while working on these last few assignments…
Hi Emma,
Thank you for responding to my blog! I totally agree with you; I oftentimes find myself instinctively associating home with the physical element, yet I neglect to recognize as well that it is much more than that. I feel as though we, as individuals, often fixate on the literal definition of things (i.e. ‘home’ as strictly a physical place), and in turn, eliminate further possibilities. For me, aside from just solely attributing the word to the physicality of a location, I have grown to associate home as the people I surround myself with and love to be with. I think it’s safe to say that many of us shared this realization, as you mentioned earlier. 🙂