After reflecting upon the many blogs I have read on the topic of home I have, a) developed an interesting new perspective of the concept of home itself, and b) become self conscious of my writing after seeing the quality of insights of many of your posts over the past few weeks. I came back to university to gain a new perspective and to learn new things about the world-at-large. This assignment in particular has touched on both of these ideals, and I was humbled and honored to read many of your discussions.

While reading your posts one overarching theme emerged in my eyes: the shifting and objective reality of home.On Paniz Pasha’s blog, she discussed first hearing this concept from her Grade 10 teacher who remarked,

” My grade 10 teacher once told me “Home is located in the place you are best at adapting in”.

This was a very interesting idea to me, because it suggests (correctly) that home is a the reality that we accept, and that it changes with us. In particular, in Pacha’s story she offered how without ever consciously declaring that she had a new home here in Canada, it became one.

Krystle interestingly showed how even a virtual reality an manifest itself as a feeling of home.  Perhaps we place our emotional sense of home into a non physical space such as GTA V. Rabia’s post discusses a simiar idea with her discussion on David Seamon’s article, Physical and Virtual Environments: Meaning of Place and Space.

I am glad that we are able to share in reading each others blogs, precisely because I am able to be introduced to articles such as this. In this article they state pretty succinctly the creation of a physical and extra-physical sense of home.

Home is not only a physical place, but a locus of activities,an anchor of identity, a repository of memories bonding past and present, and a center of stability and continuity

Rabia also stated that the physical reality matters very little in the creation of a personal, fundamental idea of home. This is true, however I believe we can take that further and state that opposingly, the physical reality can offer, in three dimensions, a constant reminder of what makes a place significant. Lara Deglan’s story offered a reminder that the visible aging of a place can serve as a representation of how much we have changed while comparing it to the spaces themselves. Whether it is the comparison of how things have weathered–as in the case of the ’77 & ’91 Fords, or how things have stayed exactly the same–as with the elder cedar tree, the physical place can be significant in the development of a sense of home, but its significance can only be created through the passage of time.

Home is in constant motion. Yet, as the saying goes:

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,”

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