A home is a symbol of the world, our own mini-world, our own Mother Earth. When we feel safe and comfortable in our homes then we feel more able to deal with the outside world. When we remember this link consciously and honor our homes, we will change our relationship, not only with our homes but also with our wider home, the planet herself.
~Jane Alexander, Spirit of the Home
I’ve had a lot of time this year to think about my home, and what it means to call a place “home.” In truth, these musings began in 2021 as we moved away from where we’d lived for more than two decades to start a new life in Portugal.
Our nomadic great-great ancestors created shelters as they roamed in search of food. They took cover in caves and made lean-tos and dugouts for protection from the elements. Though temporary, these shelters offered physical safety, comfort, and a focus for connection to the roaming community.
Most people think of home as a physical place, an edifice, a specific geographic location. Yet home offers many functions, existing as far more than a physical presence.
Some of Western cultures earliest writings offer the idea of home as emotional refuge. Pliny the Elder, a first-century Roman naturalist, philosopher, and naval commander, suffered long, separations from his home. He penned the famous proverb “Home is where the heart is.” Eighteen hundred years later, Lord Byron echoed that thought when he wrote, “Without hearts, a home is not a home.”
The word home in Middle English comes from the word ha-m, or hōm, which means “a place where people live,” where it referred more to a gathering of people, and only secondarily to the physical place where people gather. I find it interesting that an early definition of the word “house” referred to “family, ancestors, and descendants,” again, not to a physical place.
In modern life, many of us live alone and yet create homes, so it exists as more complex than a gathering of people. For many of us, to have one’s own home is to retain one’s independence.
In fact, home is our domicile, our neighborhood, our community, even our country.
And thus we return to where it begins with me.
At its deepest core, home means security. It is THE PLACE we feel we belong. It is familiar. We use it as a place to hold ephemeral memories and personal belongings that reflect and define who we are. It is ours as we have made it. Home is a protected place where we prepare to go out into the world. It is the safe place where we return. It is where we find repose, reflection, restoration, and personal expression. Home is safe because it is where we make the rules. At home we decide whether, and how much we want privacy, solitude, or the company of others.
Informally, I’ve asked people how they define home. They tell me about how it feels to be home. How they recognize it by how they feel when they are there. They talk about how its where they visually and sense-ually express themselves.
In Spanish, there is a nearly untranslatable word, querencia, that means something like ‘the place where you are your most authentic self’. Home is where you know who you are, It is the welcoming port in the storm, offering shelter, warmth, and comfort.
Some time ago, I decided that home had no permanent physical presence, but instead resided within a more dynamic relationship. That of my husband. Gooily romantic? Perhaps. Nonetheless, it is where I choose to place the locale of my gathering place, my safe space, the place where I live.
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
~James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room