Finding a home is a lot like finding love. Many people search for it their entire lives only to never truly taste it. Often, people look for it in the wrong places at the wrong times, mistaking it for something more trivial or giving it up when they find it. In many ways, finding a home is a love, only that, instead of finding the connection in a person, one finds it in a place.
A home is not a house nor even, necessarily, a building. You don't have to live there or even go there often. Truth be told, home isn't even a place at all, it's a connection you share with a place. It can be a connection forged over time or a bond formed instantly, the second you set foot on the hallowed ground.
Home is a feeling of comfort, a sense of belonging. It's a feeling of security, a place to come to when you're in retreat from the world around you, it's a nurturing sensation that helps you recover and invites you in even when everywhere else seems to reject you.
As such, you can't make a home or build one, it has to find you. Furthermore, the homes we knew and loved as children are quickly outgrown the same as the blankets and lullabies that once made us feel safe. They become nothing more than cherished memories of a simpler time, when the world was smaller and home was wherever you rested your head.
But in our materialistic society, we forget the value of a home. We build houses and mansions, mistaking them to be homes. We feel that we can build bigger, better and more perfect dwellings and make them homes, that we can solve everything with money and greed.
We waste billions upon billions building castles, large and small, only to find them empty and meaningless. No matter how many people live inside them, these temples to greed always feel vacant, like no life can survive within them. They're cookie cutter solutions to an individual need, a desire that's as personal and unique to us as our fingerprints.
That's why we build houses, not homes. That's why so many people, though happy in every other way, are still searching for that feeling of home. Though they might have the family of their dreams and the life they've always craved, there's always that gnawing sense of emptiness, the realization that something is lacking, whenever they stare at the walls around them.
Because home is about character, the character of yourself and the character of the place around you. That's what makes a home something you can't buy, but something you find, cherish and hold onto.
For, much like love, it's something that can be very fleeting and something found not in the grandest of words or gestures, but the smallest of symbols. If you don't enjoy the moments you have, they could be gone tomorrow and moments not enjoyed make poor memories.
So, if you find a home, no matter where it is or what it is, cherish it and love it as deeply as you can. You owe it to yourself and to those who haven't found it yet to make every moment count.
For, in a world so full of misery, we must treasure every joy we can find, even the simple joys of feeling safe and secure in the place that you call home.
Very true … I myself am still trying to find this place called home.
It's amazing how true this is. I live in South Carolina, but Georgia will always be my home, because up to about five months ago i lived in the same house, in the same town, in the middle of no where. But despite how pathitic the town and all the memorys i wish i didn't have that are connected to it, it's the only place that i have ever really belonged and i miss it terrably. Anyway, great work you hit the nail right on the head.
~Celia
This is all very true.
This rant stirs a deep longing in my soul to find a place to call my own; I'm eighteen now and I'm getting the urge more and more to leave the nest, so to speak, and find a place to call my own, I feel that the place I now call home isn't really my "home". I hope someday I'll find that "home" you speak of. I don't know when I'll find "home", but I know it's out there for me, somewhere.
this is awesome. and very true
i love the way u describe home for i hav not yet found my home but i hope to very soon
The concept of home is what you want it to be. Throughout the entire "rant," you say a home is where you are most comfortable and feel safest at.
I find this line compromising to your message of "home is a feeling":
"But in our materialistic society, we forget the value of a home. We build houses and mansions, mistaking them to be homes"
What if those with mansions and castles decide they feel safe and loved with that dwelling? It is obviously their home. Or if some individual builds a place and feels it is his place? You can make a home, and i don't belive it is any less authentic than "finding" one.
Also:
"That's why we build houses, not homes. That's why so many people, though happy in every other way, are still searching for that feeling of home"
I also feel that it isn't the materialistc sence of society as much as it is the fall of the Maternal Family, as in materialism isn't the focus, I think the feeling of home has alot to do with how you feel and the safety and loveingness of a family.
Sorry the generalization of Mansion builders finding and empty shell of their home and materialism, whats the deal? with that? i mean really can I e-mail the writer ro something. Those concepts sort of fustrate me.
I really get what your saying..I'm one of the lucky ones I have found my home. your 100% correct in that its not always a house etc.. for me its the road. For 3 generations befor me my family traveled with the circus and carnival..My mother put me in a private school and I never had that feeling of being home until I graduated and hit the road..I'm still on the road..As long as I have my kids and my husband and the open road I am home.
Catch ya down the quay!
~Traveller~
I used to feel where I lived which was in Illinois was my home. I thought I felt connected, I belonged there. But we moved to a little town in California. I met the greatest friends of my life and every time I say home, I mean there. I learned to accept change, it got me to where I am today. My friend Matthew reminded me of that. But, I still don't feel as connected. There seems to be something there that I need to seek or let it find me. It's a strong. I want to thank you for these Rants, it really opens my mind to things I have pushed I he back of my head. I've found myself coming here more often.