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Friday, September 16, 2011

The concept of HOME

Are you home?

Go back to the moments when you're a bored kid at your parents friends house. You whine to your mom, "I wanna go hooooooome."

Now consider the next day when you're running around like a maniac at Tom Schroeder's 6th birthday party. Mom tells you it's time to go home and you whine again, "Nooooooo!"

What makes it so desirable one day and so distasteful the next? As many aphorisms tell us, home is not really about a place, but about a feeling. Not home, but being AT home. When "home is where the heart is", it doesn't mean a specific physical place. It's where you feel like you belong. It's where you want to be.



As adults, most of us are able to suppress our whiny inner kids. We just mentally trudge through those moments when we'd rather be somewhere else. But what happens when you are actually in your own house and the thought occurs to you that you want to go home? Maybe the first time you can disregard it easily by thinking, "What a silly thought!" But as months and years pass and you think it again and again, you realize that something is wrong. Your house is fine, but you are not where your heart is. You are not home.

We're trained from birth by the expectations of those who have gone before us. Our path is clear: go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, etc... But what if there's another way? Education sounds reasonable and being able to support yourself is pretty important. But all of it, even these things, should be a choice.

I ask again....Are you home?