There are few things pure in this world anymore,
And home is one of the few.
We’d have a drink outside,
Maybe run and hide if we saw a couple men in blue.

To me it’s so damn easy to see
That true people are the people at home.
Well, I’ve been away but now I’m back today,
And there ain’t a place I’d rather go.

I feel home,
When I see the faces that remember my own.
I feel home,
When I’m chillin outside with the people I know.

 I feel home,
And that’s just what I feel.
Home is reality,
And all I need is something real.

-I Feel Home (O.A.R.)

What is home?

Merriam-Webster defines home in several different ways. Home can be one’s place of residence, their house. Or maybe home is the social unit formed by a family living together. Habitat, a familiar usual setting, the focus of one’s domestic attention, headquarters, and place of origin are also ways to define home. Home can mean so many things to so many different people or at different times depending on the circumstance.

A place of residence

We call the place we live our home. Our house, apartment, dorm room, our parent’s house any of these get coined home depending on which stage of life we are in.

Perhaps, the house we live in doesn’t even feel like home, it is just a house. This was the case with our first house in Morrisville. It was a great house. This is the place we lived when we had our first two babies. For that, this house will always hold a special place. However, I never really felt fully ‘at home’ there. Maybe I knew on some level that we wouldn’t be there forever and I was in some way protecting my heart from becoming too attached.

If you ask my sister, she will tell you she felt more at home in that house on Tortoise Lane that she does the house we live in now. She has spent considerably more time at our current house since we are in town and have lived here 3 years longer. She is also a mother now, and this house is the only one my niece has ever known us to have, yet there is some ambiguous key element that is missing for my sister.

A social unit formed by family living together

“Home is where we are together” or “home is where the heart is” are two common phrases we hear that point to this idea that it is the people not the place that make a home. I bet most people tend to lean this way. Who are we without people? We were meant to live in community. Family is our first experience with community. We depend on each other for so many of our most basic needs. This bonds us and makes us who we are. Every person in our lives shapes who we are and who we will become. But some people are far more important to us than others. These people become the embodiment of home to us. So much so, that it may be difficult to ever feel at home when we are away from them. I talk more about this here.

A familiar or usual setting

A familiar or usual setting could refer to your town or neighborhood. If your kids are in sports you may feel home is on the baseball field or at the pool. Perhaps you feel home at your place of work. Likely it is some place you spend a lot of time where you start to feel comfortable, familiar, or knowledgeable about.

When I was in college, I had classes in many different buildings. Since my major was economics, my home was the Bryan School of Business building. While I didn’t have a bedroom in this building, or sleep there, I did spend much time there. Not only that, I made friends there. The people I knew could be found in that building. I ate lunch in it’s halls, studied in it’s empty rooms, and laughed in it’s common rooms. I knew my way around, where the bathrooms were, where my classes could be found, and where my professors’ offices were. This is the place I took the phone interview that would lead to my job out of college. For three years, this place was home.

A focus of one’s domestic attention

In the novel “Left Neglected,” Sarah’s mother was living with them while caring for Sarah and her family. Sarah asked her mom if she missed her home. Her mother’s response was that her home right now is with them. Why was that? Because that was the place where she was focusing her domestic attention. It was her job to care for Sarah and her young family, so she felt that she was at home there in their home.

A place of origin

If you move away from where you grew up, it may be that your home town is truly home in your mind. We hear people refer to ‘back home’ and that can mean the next town over, two states away, the opposite coast, or even a different country. No matter where we are from, to some extent it will always hold a piece of the idea of home. A piece of our puzzle. A bit of our story.

It can be the culture of the place, the geography of that place of origin, or the people who still live there that elicits the sense of home. Ultimately, it is more that just the dot on the map that makes up the home to which we refer.

I believe home is so much more than merely a place.

‘At home’ is defined as feeling relaxed and comfortable, at ease; feeling in harmony with the surroundings; and on familiar ground or knowledgeable. Now we are getting somewhere. At home points to feelings. Feelings such as comfort, harmony, relaxation, knowledge, security, and familiarity make us feel at home. We all have this ambiguous feeling inside of us.This thing, this feeling we don’t know we need to name is home. Love, security, belonging, peace, and connection work together to conjure the feeling of home. Feeling home is the most basic call of the heart. No matter who you are, where you’re from, the type of childhood you’ve had, or the type of path you are on right now, home is at the core whether you are able to name it or not.

Memories can bring us a sense of feeling of security, freedom, comfort, love, and rest. Smells, flavors, sounds, songs, and objects can all trigger those memories.

Once we identify this feeling, it becomes concrete. Then, we can be intentional about handing down this sense of home. That legacy will foster a bond throughout the generations that is lacking these days.

“Home is the most important thing that we can hand down to the next generation, and it is the most important thing that was handed down to us.”