What is home?
October 9, 2009 by Marguerite Orane
Filed under Featured Posts, Love
I returned home to Jamaica from Canada 2 weeks ago
I had this strange feeling as the plane landed at Norman Manley airport in Kingston, as I drove through the streets of the city, as I went to my sister’s and then my brother’s homes. I had never felt this way coming back to Jamaica. All the previous times I had left, I had my own abode to return to. This time I did not. Even my old residence, which I still owned and where I had lived for 16 years, where my children and numerous litters of puppies were born and raised, where I planted trees and tended a garden, where I celebrated birthdays, Christmas and other special and not-so-special occasions, where I had my “home” office, did not feel like “home”.
And so I muse: “What is home”?
There are many popular sayings about “home”:
“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned” – Maya Angelou.
Home is a place of safety and acceptance
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it” – George Moore
Home is where you find what you need
“My home is not a place, it is people” – Lois McMaster Bujold
Home is the people you love
“Home is not where you live but where they understand you” – Christian Morganstern
Home is understanding
“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Home is peace and happiness
“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself” – Maya Angelou
Home is within you
“Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound” – Herman Melville
Home is life
So, really, home is more than a country, community or dwelling. Home is within you, who you are. Home is the innermost you. And when you are comfortable BEING home, then wherever on this globe you are, home is. “Home is where the heart is” – home is where you are being love.
beautiful!
Home for me is where I am at peace with my God, my family and my neighbours regardless of whether I am living in a palace or in a hut.
Hence, I am a always at home because I am at peace.
So true, if I don’t feel at home it is within me. Many times I have moved my “home” and many times I wonder if I will ever feel at home anywhere? I realized that it is not places but how I felt in a particular moment in my life whether I felt at home. Home is where I am now in the present, with my mind, heart and soul.
Home is the place that when you go there they have to let you in:)
I love these sayings! Again you’ve inspired me. Thanks. I’m going to use one or more of them on a scrapbook page…
Beautifully said Ulla!
Most importantly home is where you are at peace with yourself! Only then can you truly be at peace with others
I couldn’t describe home more perfectly…that’s why you are the writer and I the subscriber…I especially like the the addition…”Most importantly home is where you are at peace with yourself! Only then can you truly be at peace with others” because that is where the home really begins, that where it really takes shape..with one’s self.
Thanks for sharing.
Carol – thanks for your comment. Isn’t it a comforting thought about home? This means that you can be at home wherever you physically are. Peace
Dear Maggie thank you for sharing. For one who has lived a relatively nomadic life over the last 14 years, home has been something that I have thought about constantly. Home is so many things. It is where your immediate family is. For me though even more importantly the larger concept of home is that place with which you identify; where you belong. Where you understand the humor. Where you miss the food.
Trinidad and the Caribbean will always be home for me. I believe that Monique, who has only lived there for 3 of her almost 15 years, also considers Trinidad home. You are right that home, in the spiritual sense, is where you are at peace with yourself. I guess I believe that home for me would be where that is easiest to attain.
Food for thought. Keep sharing.
Nigel,
Home is so many things. Interesting that Monique considers Trinidad her home. JA will always be my home, but I really do feel that so is Canada – or wherever I happen to end up. Home goes with me wherever I go. Which is why I am happy wherever I am. Yes, it is food for thought
Bless you
Marguerite