‘Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.”
– John Ed Pearce
“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
“There’s no place like home!”
– Dorothy Gale
I have a cherished piece of needlepoint on my living room wall, next to my front door, that says “Home is where the heart is.” My maternal grandmother made it in 1967. It also features a peaceful rendering of our house at the time. My grandmother’s generous gift expresses the literal idea of home and also manifests an expression of warmth toward our family. Home, it must be acknowledged, is a very large and diffuse idea, expanding out – and in – almost infinitely from its literal origin. Home is a cherished idea for almost all of us, deeply rooted in the psychology of human personality.
Home is there for us all when we begin our life’s journey, but it initially has no meaning; in those early days, we live purely instinctively, having no knowledge or cognitive ability with which to direct our thoughts and actions. As life goes by, however, the meaning of home grows and shifts in response to the changing context our lives bring to it. As we age, home acquires a precious, deeply felt quality and in most cases comes to carry a sense of longed for resolution – finally I will get there! Sometimes we use the word “home” to refer to a positive experience of the afterlife. Like its literal meaning, this kind of home brings a sense of relief, kindness and release and can be a source of comfort. The harder life gets, the more comforting becomes our fantasy of home.
When we think of home in the literal sense, we often nostalgically long to return to an often romanticized or otherwise distorted version of where we lived our younger days. Home stands in our memories as the center of our beginnings, and it comes up with a lot of feeling, usually warm and comforting. We add to our literal longing for home the fantasy of a metaphoric home that promises us release from the challenges of human life.
Sadly, some of us grew up in homes that were neither warm nor kind. In such cases, our desire for home is not literal, but a wish to go back to a quiet innocence before the trauma that occurred during those vulnerable years. Or it can be ambivalent: I want to go back but I am aware of my accompanying anxiety driven by the awareness of the traumatic experiences that occurred when I lived there. Going home can be a relief or a difficult, painful challenge.
The more life beats us up and wears us down, the stronger the draw of home’s promise of acceptance, innocence and comfort. The worse things are in the present, the more ideal the fantasized future we create, made even more attractive by its seeming to be a longed-for return to better times. The idyllic “heaven” that appears in the songs of American slaves is starkly at odds with the dire cruelty of their everyday lives.
It is helpful, then, to be aware of “home” during hard times – an eventual letting go of our tribulations, a positive manifestation of impermanence. Home contains hope and comfort. It tells us that while we are on a difficult journey now, some day we will be released from it. The literal return home contains a little of that, too, because life was generally easier and less oppressive when we were small and our recollections of those early times become more idealized as we age.
Finally, there is the idea of home as a psychological, spiritual place. The late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh was an active voice of dissent during the Vietnam War – called the “American War” where he came from. The thanks he got for that was a 41 year exile from his homeland. No one else would have him either, until France finally stepped up. In his writings, he talks about how not having a home gave him the opportunity to become at home wherever he was. He recognized the “home” in our being present and at peace with ourselves. This home reflects our acceptance and appreciation of all the life around us and inside us. He realized that as long as he was in such a positive mind space, every night he went to bed at home. It is my wish that we all find that place.
Meanwhile, maybe you thought of something having to do with home that was not part of this article. I’d be interested in hearing about it! Just hit the call button and we can talk about it at your convenience!
