When I was younger, I can remember always being somehow fascinated with the concept of home. How everyone’s home was different, how it affects who you are and how you act. Growing up in a household that was a bit different than a typical home, I always analyzed others and compared them to mine. I never really understood why I did it, but looking back now, I think that I had been trying to figure out what really constitutes home. Through all of my childhood efforts, I never really discovered what home truly meant, until I left my hometown to start my own journey and find my own definition of home.

The first thing I discovered about the concept of home is that you can have several. I can remember getting ready to leave for college and feeling so much sadness at the thought of leaving home. But before I knew it, I had found another place that felt like home, and I finally understood that you can’t only belong in one place. There’s something really amazing about getting to plant your roots in several places. I love all of my places, and I’m thankful that home is not only a singular place, but rather a collection of locations in which my heart feels the most happy. I think that’s what home is supposed to be.

I have come to believe that the most important aspect of home isn’t the location, but rather the people. When I think of home, of course I think of the house I grew up in, or the sun shining through the stained glass windows in my church, or even the thought of walking through campus on a perfect fall day. But more than that, home makes me think of the people I grew up with, and my close family. Home is the people at my church whose constant love and support goes unmatched. Home is all of the wonderful friends I’ve met at college, the ones who have become so central to my life. There’s something so special and magical about finding a home within people- the simple notion of knowing that you’re right where you belong. I thinkHome is the people in our lives who make us feel like we’re right where we’re supposed to be, no matter where we are.

In her book This is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live, Melody Warnick remarks, ““We speak of searching for happiness, of finding contentment, as if these were locations on an atlas, actual places that we could visit if only we had the proper map and the right navigational skills.” There’s a powerful message written in these words. Sometimes it seems that we are so absorbed in finding the place that we’re happy, the place that we belong, that we may not realize that we’ve been there this whole time. Maybe our happy place, isn’t in fact a place, but a person, or a group of people who make you feel more loved and accepted than you ever have in your entire life. What if home is all of the places we’ve been and all of the people we’ve met? What if home is something so meaningful that it doesn’t fit any definition or bounds we may try to give it?