Home

My definition of home is any place or situation that allows a person to feel safe, calm, and collected. Home is something many people take for granted. Most people think of it as a single place of residence, when in actuality it can have a far more complex meaning. Everyone has a special place where they feel comfortable, but it’s the emotional feeling they get from that place which allows someone to give it the title “home”.

Too many people in the world think of a home as a mere asset or a place of residence. If people have a mentality that a home is only a residence then they will have no emotional attachment to it. As Anna Quindlen has stated “Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate.” This suggests that homes are like cars. People buy them, use them, then sell them and move on without a second thought.

A home, however, can be much more than a tangible piece of property. A home can be a comfortable feeling in a certain situation or even what many people call a happy place. It is any place, alternate imagined reality, or situation that causes your brain to produce endorphins resulting in a constant state of euphoria, sense of security, sanctuary, and privacy. Quindlen puts it remarkably well stating “it is – a place of certainty, stability, predictability, privacy, for me and for my family.” In her eyes she portrays it as a positive state of mind.

The popular term, “feeling right at home”, applies to everyone. A home doesn’t have to be somewhere where you live, even if it is a piece of property. That is not implying that it can’t be a piece of property, because it certainly can. If you feel comfortable at a certain place, real or imagined, then you may “feel” right at home. It can become a place that you enjoy visiting often.

Quindlen has her own definition of home, “Home is where the heart is.” Home cannot have a single definition. Like I said earlier, a “home” can have many forms, and individual forms can all have definitions, but if one thing has many forms, then many definitions can be placed on it by different sources. One definition still stands out to me however. The simplest one there is. Home is a happy place.