A long time ago, my childhood home and my room meant the world to me: It was where I felt safe, comfortable, and where I belonged.
Today, when I visit that same place, I feel nothing: It’s just an old house, and walls.
True, it reminded me of some cheerful memories the first couple of times I went there, but nothing more than that. I no longer have any emotional attachment to it, quiet the contrary: sometimes I feel uncomfortable being there and just want to go back to my place.
What used to be Home is just a House now.
See, Home is a feeling, and like most feelings, it’s not exclusively attached to something unique: It varies, it comes and goes, it can be destroyed and re-created again in some other place or in some other way.
But where can we find this feeling? And why is it important in the first place?
Why Home is Important
We as humans beings have a need to feel that we belong: belong to a family, to a country, to a place, to a religion, etc. In fact, the famous 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow classifies the desire to belong as a fundamental need for human flourishment in his pyramidal Hierarchy of needs.
Now, Home is one of the ways of fulfilling this need: When you are Home, you feel safe & comfortable, you feel that you belong to this place, that it forms part of who you are. In fact, it’s an extension of who you are and what you project on it: The artwork you use to decorate the place, the placement of the different furniture, hell even the people you have living with you, it’s all based on your personal preferences, and it all says a lot about your identity.
Home is also what brings stability in your life: It’s one of the few things in your life that is constant, it’s a basis from which you can go off and explore the world and safely return to. And we as humans beings need a certain stability in order to thrive.
If you take away this Home feeling, it would be as if you are left in an ocean without any anchor: You don’t have something you feel that you belong to, project your identity on, and safely return to after a long day.
That’s why the feeling of Home is crucial for the healthy development and fulfillment of people.
5 Places to Find Home
Now, does Home necessarily have to be a place with 4 walls?
Or can it something else, like two arms hugging you when in need, a wise compassionate self you find inside of you, a coffee shop you go to every morning?
See, since Home is not just a place but a feeling, it can then be created anywhere, anytime, through many means.
So here are 5 places where you could feel at Home.
1- Yourself
Have you ever considered that this home feeling could be created from within yourself?
How great would that be: not being tied up to anything outside your control to create this feeling, and fulfilling your need to belong without depending on anything external to you.
Well, this could be achieved with self-compassion: Through having a wise compassionate self in you that is there for you when things get rough, that consoles you, understands you, welcomes you, and loves you.
If you are able to be compassionate with yourself in that way, you would always feel at home in your body, whatever you do, wherever you are.
Of course, this is no easy task, people generally tend to be critical towards themselves instead because we evolved to notice the negative events to ensure our survival rather than the positive ones, so we tend to focus with the negative stuff with ourselves too.
But with some conscious effort, we can learn to be more self-compassionate, and come back home.
2- Your House
This is the obvious one, you can feel at home, well, in your house.
However, this does not mean that you are tied with your childhood house, or your second house, or the 100th place you live in.
You can create the feeling of home in any house you live in, anywhere in the world, even if it’s on the moon.
In other words, you don’t have to stay in your comfort zone, live in the same house and city forever, and drastically limit your growth opportunities because you are too afraid of loosing your sense of belonging.
You can recreate that sense of belonging anywhere. With a little bit work, wherever you decide to live, you can feel at home. So don’t limit yourself and live forever in the same place, go out there and explore the world, Home will follow you.
3 – Nature
Nature is our ultimate shared home: It’s where we ALL belong, humans, and all other living entities on this planet.
Wherever you live in this world, you will always find a home in mother nature: when you go for a walk in the forest, a hike in the mountains, or even a quick picnic in the park next door.
We have a strong connection to Nature: In fact, for the most part of human existence on this planet, we lived in nature, not in cities.
That’s where we came from, and that’s where we are returning to.
Nature is a freely available home you can go to anytime anywhere without depending on anything or anyone else: It’s completely within your reach.
So if you ever feel a lack of belonging for some reason, go to nature, it’s your birthright home.
“In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 – Your Tribe
Have you ever been gathered with your close friends and felt that deep sense of belonging to the group?
That’s right, feeling at home can also simply mean being surrounded by your close ones.
This is part of the effort you have to make to feel at home anywhere anytime even if you move to a new land: Go out there, make connections, and build your tribe.
5- Your Partner
Home can sometimes simply be the two arms of our partner holding us when in need. The strong bond between romantic partners can serve as a way to fulfill this sense of belonging we always long for, all the while exploring together the unknown universe.
Or, as Tiny Dragon puts it:
Feeling at Home is Always Within Your Control
There you go, 5 ways to feel at home and fulfill your need to belong.
Notice that the first and third ones are 100% within your control: Finding a Home in yourself and in Nature allows you to fulfill this need to belong without depending on anyone or anything else.
You don’t need to wait for other people (your tribe, your partner) to make you feel at home, and you don’t even need to have a certain financial stability to fulfill this need (through having a house).
You can fulfill this need through your internal resources and still feel at home even if and whenever those external entities are unavailable. That’s how you become more self-reliant.
So Where Is Home Then?
Home is wherever you are, it’s the comforting person you find in yourself, it’s mother nature and its magnificent mountains, it’s the house you live in and how it represents a part of you, it’s the strong connections you make wherever you are in the world and the tribe you build, it’s your romantic partner holding you tight.
In the last analysis, you belong to this world, you are no alien here, and just as the roots of the tree penetrates the fertile ground to create its home, you too have the right to claim your place on this planet, so don’t be a stranger, and make yourself at home.
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