Home; a definition
Home. It's an odd concept. One I've been wrestling with defining for a very long time. I think "home" is different for everyone. For some, it's the house you grew up in, your immediate family members, your significant other, or the city in which you live. For others it's maybe a little more abstract, perhaps it's a person or a place you can no longer go back to, a state of mind or being, or something you are constantly searching for. I've had conversations with people asking them "where they are from" or "where is home?" in airports and cafes and at work and hotel bars. Everyone has a different answer, a different concept or explanation. "Born and raised in _____" or "been in ______ for 20 years now so guess that's home". Sometimes they tell me about their families or their loved ones they are going to see or missing. It's different for everyone, and something that I think is intensely important to wrestle with.
For me, home has been an idea and feeling that comes and goes. There are days when I wake up, and it's a person. Someone that no matter how long it's been or where we are at as far as a relationship goes, being with them feels like the most natural thing in the world. Then there are days when I wake up, and it's a place. I think it depends on where I am both physically and mentally at the time. Sometimes I have to talk myself out of my "ideas" of what I think home is or what it should be. People will tell you not to make a home out of a person, because people leave. Others will tell you that if we don't make homes in other people, what the hell are we living for? We all go through life experiencing and believing different things, and the concept and feeling of home is no exception.
When I travel for work, it can be a very a very alienating time for me. I spend weeks at a time on the road, away from my friends and those I love, away from my apartment and city that I call home, and away from my daily routine that most call "life". I am in a different city or hotel most nights, eating take-out and Starbucks everyday. It's on these trips that I truly start to reflect on what makes something feel like home to me. They are a constant reminder of the comfort that I find in those I love, and creating a life and memories with those people. I am also constantly reminded of the things that everyone else calls home, as most days I am in high schools and speaking with students and families. Meeting them in THEIR neighborhoods and communities. Their homes. I see people from all walks of life, coming from different places, and the one constant I see in these trips is that everyone has something they call home, and I am usually meeting them in it. That makes my struggle with home and being alone on these trips exponentially harder. It makes me feel like a shell of a person, and reminds me of the things I am missing out on. That discomfort and emptiness leads to more thought of what home is, and where I will finally find it, or if I already have.
Home to me is whatever fills my cup and makes me feel whole. Sometimes that is my best friends, scattered across the country (and world). It's my bed in my apartment and cuddled up with my cat and a good cup of homemade coffee. Somedays it's the ocean on travel season on the coast of California, or the mountains of Colorado that have gotten me through two of the hardest but best years of my life. Other days it's Blacksburg, Virginia and the small college town that shaped the person I am today or a phone call and the voice of someone I love. The past 26 years have taught me and shaped me in a lot of different ways, but I think home is something I will always continue to chase. The concept has never been easy for me to define, and there have been many events in my life that have caused that confusion and make me think differently about it.
So I hope today, you feel at home, or have something that feels like home to you. Whether you are getting to cherish is, missing it, or longing for it, I hope you are happy with whatever home is for you. And if you haven't found it yet, keep searching. Someday it will come, and maybe that journey is part of finding home, too.
For me, home has been an idea and feeling that comes and goes. There are days when I wake up, and it's a person. Someone that no matter how long it's been or where we are at as far as a relationship goes, being with them feels like the most natural thing in the world. Then there are days when I wake up, and it's a place. I think it depends on where I am both physically and mentally at the time. Sometimes I have to talk myself out of my "ideas" of what I think home is or what it should be. People will tell you not to make a home out of a person, because people leave. Others will tell you that if we don't make homes in other people, what the hell are we living for? We all go through life experiencing and believing different things, and the concept and feeling of home is no exception.
When I travel for work, it can be a very a very alienating time for me. I spend weeks at a time on the road, away from my friends and those I love, away from my apartment and city that I call home, and away from my daily routine that most call "life". I am in a different city or hotel most nights, eating take-out and Starbucks everyday. It's on these trips that I truly start to reflect on what makes something feel like home to me. They are a constant reminder of the comfort that I find in those I love, and creating a life and memories with those people. I am also constantly reminded of the things that everyone else calls home, as most days I am in high schools and speaking with students and families. Meeting them in THEIR neighborhoods and communities. Their homes. I see people from all walks of life, coming from different places, and the one constant I see in these trips is that everyone has something they call home, and I am usually meeting them in it. That makes my struggle with home and being alone on these trips exponentially harder. It makes me feel like a shell of a person, and reminds me of the things I am missing out on. That discomfort and emptiness leads to more thought of what home is, and where I will finally find it, or if I already have.
Home to me is whatever fills my cup and makes me feel whole. Sometimes that is my best friends, scattered across the country (and world). It's my bed in my apartment and cuddled up with my cat and a good cup of homemade coffee. Somedays it's the ocean on travel season on the coast of California, or the mountains of Colorado that have gotten me through two of the hardest but best years of my life. Other days it's Blacksburg, Virginia and the small college town that shaped the person I am today or a phone call and the voice of someone I love. The past 26 years have taught me and shaped me in a lot of different ways, but I think home is something I will always continue to chase. The concept has never been easy for me to define, and there have been many events in my life that have caused that confusion and make me think differently about it.
So I hope today, you feel at home, or have something that feels like home to you. Whether you are getting to cherish is, missing it, or longing for it, I hope you are happy with whatever home is for you. And if you haven't found it yet, keep searching. Someday it will come, and maybe that journey is part of finding home, too.
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