Although the word "home" invokes certain emotions usually tied to a place, when it comes to describing it via comments is a challenging task. For many, it is a specific house that changes not so often. For some others, it is everywhere and, for a few, nowhere. This article is aimed at understanding better what home may ultimately mean.
Do we choose our own homes, or do our homes choose us? To me, it's a two-sided contract initialised by the present itself.
People indeed build houses. In turn, homes build people, even generations. Such a bidirectional relationship makes homes very interesting to observe. Could it mean that by people building a house, he connects himself to his desired future self? Or conversely, could it tell a materialised past he never wants to forget? In my opinion, it is a bridge. A bridge from the past to the future is ultimately the "present". So, homes exist with people at the same time. There are some implications of this kind of thinking:
Homes are dynamic and should be dynamic. People, over time, change and evolve. To sustain such change, they must choose homes that will ease their travelling in that direction. A person who denies changing their home is stopping their self from evolving to their next self. Homes, when needed, have to be changed. The fear of the future shouldn't keep one pinned to a place of the past because one lives with the present.
Homes are equipment rather than goals. The present cannot be a goal because goals always imply something that is not achieved. A person aiming for a specific home is bound to fail because this is contradictory. During the accumulation phase, the effort to build such a home means that this place hasn't been completed yet and cannot be home to a person. The home is not a home. But when it is completed, the person's goal changes and this thing is no longer the intended home. It is of vital importance that homes should be viewed as types of equipment for achieving goals rather than end goals.
Homes give information about ourselves. Bridges always connect the former to further. They are the link and, eventually, the connexion. By inspecting our so-called dwellings, we could learn much about where we have been and will be. This is valuable because homes are like one-to-one references to a person's desires and conditions. People living in an apartment would realise that they like people, for example. Or they are fearful of facing threats alone. FBI uses homes to locate their targets because their targets inhabit certain homes. After all, finding a president's house is intuitively straightforward.
Homes don't have to be material. The traveller's home is fascinating to inspect. They seem to inhabit everywhere but nowhere at the same time. Nomads' home is probably their belongings and the people travelling with them. A lover's home is their partner's arms. For Buddha and many other meditators, it has been their inner space. A risky but rewarding place to inhabit is probably one's mind.
Home is ultimately a feeling—such uncontrollable indexing of our subconsciousness. When the time comes, we must move away from our old home to the new one. It will be through this movement one will ultimately fulfil their destiny. Chasing homes is against the concept of home itself. Let the question "Where is my home?" be answered by itself rather than ourselves.
Initially published for Polyhedron on 8/25/2022
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