HOME...

Home.  What does it mean to you?  It means something different to us all I think, with some similarities intertwined every once in a while.  I posed this question on my Facebook and got a variety of answers but mostly the answers I expected.  Nothing really came out and shocked me, not that I was necessarily looking for something shocking, but I always like to see what other people say.

You have heard the more common completions to that question.  Home is: where the heart is, whenever I am with you, where I live, my address or residence, where the mom is, where my animals are, where our story begins, where we start from, where my children were raised…etc.  You have heard them, you have said them, heck, and some of you may even have something hanging on your wall right now this very second that says what HOME IS or what it means to you.

I got a lot of good responses.  There isn’t a right or wrong answer.  It is whatever it means to you.   I don’t look at home as a place though, as much as I do a feeling.  Some people make me feel like I am home.  Some places make me feel like home.  Some songs remind me of home.  Some smells remind me of home.  Meaning I would say, this feels like home to me.  You feel like home to me.  This scent smells like home to me.  This song reminds me of being home.   Meaning, it is not so much a place I call, as much as it is a feeling I feel.

I have felt like I was home on more than one occasion.  With different people, at different places and at different times in my life.  Maybe it would be easier to say what home is NOT.  It is not 4 walls.  It is not always where I lay my head.  A house does not make a home.  It is not just an address.   I have been held and felt like I was home.  I can be with friends I only get to see once or twice a year and feel like I am home.  I have felt at home sitting on a bench watching the sun set, alone.  Home is so many things, to so many people.  I just wondered how many people sat back and really thought about what it means to them.

So it seems a little bit crazy to me when someone uses the word Homeless.  I mean we instantly assume, they do not have a roof over their head and technically that is how the word would be described.  However I have been homeless before, recently as a matter of fact, but I have ALWAYS had a roof over my head.  A physical address to which my mail is received.  Well, how can I be homeless but have always had a home?  If I said that to you, what would you think I meant?  Initially, I would think that you would think I was living in my car.  I know very wealthy people who I would call homeless.  Does that make any sense?  It’s kind of like being happy.  You can have everything you ever want in your whole life and still be empty emotionally.  Now, I am not emotionally empty, but I have had days where that tank was getting low.  I mean that just because we all have a home that we drive to every single day; it doesn’t necessarily mean we are not homeless. 

Mostly I just wondered if anyone else looked at it that way.