The Meaning of Home: Where is It?
Is home a physical place? Is it where your friends are, your family? Or can it be something else entirely?
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Home is within me.
Let’s start with my answer right away.
When travelling, especially for the first time, we often think of the place we left behind as “home.” It’s a familiar place, likely where your friends, family, and job(s) are situated. In reality, I find that a true home runs far deeper than that.
It’s more than saying, “I’m going home,” after school or inviting your friends over to your place.
home — noun (dictionary.com)
a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.
the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.
These are what the textbook definitions of “home” are. No.1 certainly doesn’t leave a lot of room for sentimentality. If any roof over our heads instantly became our home, why, then, do we keep moving? Why the global search for “the perfect house,” the perfect neighbourhood? Why do we not stay put like the good ol’ stable contributors to society we’re supposed to be?
Regarding “domestic affections,” this gets even more nuanced. For some people, their obligatory home doesn’t carry with it positive connotations (or any connotation!). Without digging too deep into it, here’s a little story:
When I was nine years old, I moved to Shanghai, not of my own accord. I had to leave behind my best friends, my beloved teachers, and a school environment I still consider one of the best I’ve ever experienced. In Shanghai, I attended a private international school that catered only to children with foreign passports. Most of the kids there came from wealthy families, and even then our school was still considered the “ghetto” of international schools. For a while I lived in a rented apartment directly opposite the school. Later we moved to a complex a couple blocks away, after the apartment owner wanted to sell.
My family was by no means rich. I considered us lower middle class, but from the neighbourhood we moved to, you’d have thought we were living in poverty (oftentimes it felt like we were). It didn’t help that right across the street was one of the wealthiest condo lots surrounding the school, where many of my classmates dwelled.
This glaring disparity between rich and poor, along with the dysfunctional dynamics of my family growing up, never made me feel completely at home… at home! Sometimes I lingered after school just to avoid returning to that hollow house.
For some time I actively refused to call any of these places my “home.” I would say “my place” or some other generic cover-up. Eventually I reverted once the mental inconvenience of catching myself mid-sentence caught up to me, but the feeling remained that this was not my happy place.
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Home was back where I had close bonds. Home was where I was happy. Most importantly, home was where I felt safe. Where I didn’t have to hide.
In the ten years since I left China, I’ve obviously done a lot of growing and learning. Now my understanding of home has come to encompass a more intimate sense of “comfort.”
Remember what I said at the beginning? Home is within me.
Home is the epitome of how comfortable I am in my own skin. The confidence I’ve earned, the lessons I’ve learned over the years — those are the building blocks of the home within me. My ensuing travels have affirmed to me that home is wherever I am.
I realized this last year when I’d been thinking of moving out of the country. The thought became especially solidified after a transformative experience in Portugal. If I’m not secure in who I am and what I want — if I’m not comfortable in my home body — then what does it matter where I move to? The search would never end.
That’s not to say that an external home has no value. Who doesn’t appreciate shelter and possibly someone to welcome them back? I like to think that when you do share a physical place with someone, you’re sharing your inner homes as well.
The thing is that “home” is often a placeholder word. We delegate it to buildings, people, things… sometimes a home, for lack of, is nothing more than a place to sleep away from work. But when we realize the home within us, then we have no problem calling any place “home” because we know that wherever we are, that’s where home is. It is an extension of our level of comfort and personal validation.
A while ago I saw a quote by Canadian poet Rupi Kaur that aptly sums up the sentiments here:
It was when I stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself I found there were no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole.
So even in my search for my next place of residence, I am not looking for “home,” per se. Home will always be within me, and as long as I have the comfort of feeling safe in my skin, then where I choose to live doesn’t matter too much. Instead, I’m looking for a place to complement my inner world, somewhere that inspires me and protects my inner home from violation. And if, in the process, I find someone to be at home with, then that’s what you might call the icing on the cake.
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