A Sense of Home

I am trying to collect my thoughts around the idea of "Home" and what that means to me. So I am gathering thoughts, ideas, images, and probably going to save them here so I can work on that. Here's the first few things I've come across.

• What does "home" mean to you? Most of us envision a physical space where one lives. A sanctuary, a place that encourages growth, renewal, creativity, and togetherness. Your home is where you grow into who you can become. It should reflect and support the goals and vision you have for your life. Home can also be an emotion, expressing how we feel. It is ideal to "feel at home" in all areas of your life; your environment, your career, your friends and family, your self. Home can be within us, a place where our heart and soul resides. Where we are centered, confident, and comfortable.

• When I lived in Ann Arbor, my sense of time was so different from what it became here.... I was never content in the present that I lived in. Most of the time I remember thinking, "well, in just another year and a half, maybe I can take a year off and go to England," or I can do this and that. You know, there are so many people who live for retirement. "Five years from now ... , then I can retire and go where I want." One of the most important things of my life was the early death of my fa ther who had worked at a job that he did not love, and who planned to retire - and then died at 55. This is a common American story, probably a common human story, but I was determined it should not happen to me. When I lived here less than a year, I realized suddenly that I was living in the present for the first time of my life.... That I got up in the morning and I sniffed the wind and I saw where the sun was and I looked at things and I got to work - and I lived in that moment. And if I looked forward, it was looking forward to waking up to the next day. It wasn't looking forward to some trip I was going to make six months from now or some career change 10 years from now. I was where I wanted to be. This was an extraordinary change. ... It led to the biggest inward change. It was that sense of time. And of course, that's another way of speaking of happiness. Curiously, or frustratingly, the greatest happiness is not to know you are happy, is not to know what time it is, is to be lost in the hour.... Home is a comfort. Home is where you want to stay, where you can imagine yourself living in the ... present moment, just continuously canceling out time. When I was away from here, when I was in bad times, I had an image in my head [of "home"], a physical image, the topographical landscape of this place with all the associations of family, of history.... It invited me and comforted me....

• Where is home? Where do you feel at home, where do get a sense of home?
  It can be anywhere in the world. As long as you get the feeling of belonging. Sometimes this happens by meeting new people you like, a surrounding or area that really feels comfortable to you or ….. you cannot exactly describe why you get that nice, warm fuzzy feeling.

(back to Beth's thoughts):

I think I have usually believed that home is where the people you love are. That the place really doesn't matter, but the relationships are what matter most. I believe sometimes you can make "home" wherever you find yourself. But for me, recently, that has been hard.

I am starting to notice things that are going on when I start to feel homesick. I start questioning everything that I am doing with my life. I start trying to figure out what it is that I really want in life. I clean. I organize. I get in touch with people I haven't talked to in a while. Sometimes this is a good thing, but then sometimes I think I'm just doing it to make myself feel better right now. I wonder about my past and if I made the right decisions. I wonder about past relationships and if I made the right decisions. I wonder- is this normal? Or is this an indication that something is not right and I need to work on it? Do I need to just relax and enjoy the present, or do I really need to figure out what I want in life and go after it? That's scary. Is it possible that I have resisted going after the things I really want in life? That I have denied myself the things/relationships that I really want? Is all of this wondering just a result of being in a new place and far away from everything familiar? Do I just need to ride it out?

Lots of questions and thoughts. And then in a week, I look back at all this and feel stupid. That's the cycle. Not sure what it all means.