I am currently questioning where I want to be and what I want to be doing during this next period of my life. This has led me to ponder the concept of “home.”
In the past, home was the family farm where a person grew up, or the city apartment near the bakery where he survived high school, or the house in the suburbs where one’s parents lived their entire lives. Nowadays, children leave home and settle wherever their careers take them.
I recently watched a semi-documentary, “Nomadsland,” available on Netflix, about a widow who fitted her van with a bed and a few treasured belongings, and began to do short-term work wherever she happened to stop. The van was her home.
Articles appear at times about couples who sell their homes and live in their travel trailer, parking wherever they choose, mimicking animals that create dens or shelter beneath their shells in a different location each season. One couple moves into short-term rentals wherever they want to live for a while.
Thomas Wolfe claimed “You can’t go home again,” while another writer, Elbert Hubbard in his A THOUSAND AND ONE EPIGRAMS, proclaimed back in 1914 that “Home is where one’s affections are centered.” Several authorities believe that concept came from the Roman writer, Pliny.
So, the true question seems to be, “Where are my affections truly centered?” or has that concept, of what home is, changed as we’ve moved from rural innocence to crowded restlessness?
Is home the place where you currently live?
A place where you keep your belongings?
A place you return to for holidays?
Maybe it is a location that soothes your soul even though you don’t live there
Perhaps the concept of home is still connected to another person such as a spouse, a family member or a special friend..
What does home mean to you?
