What Is "Home"?

Somehow we always find ourselves thinking that we just want to go home. And yes we have a home, per se, but what really is "home". We can be at home and think that we really want to go home, and that begs the question of where or what's home to us. So, perhaps home is an ideal of a picture we have in our heads. Our home may not be what we see in our heads, because maybe a past house or a future destination is what we picture.

We can't get back that picture of our house from when we were children and we felt so safe with our parents and the shelter we had from the world around us. That may be what we want, but we can't get that back. And even if we went back to our childhood home thinking things could be the same, we would soon find out that the people inside, our family, were the ones who made that house a home.

"Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more. -Robin Hobb

Sometimes I feel as if home isn't a destination, but rather a place I'm traveling to. Perhaps even a goal I'm trying to reach, it's an idea of what I picture when I think of home. And maybe each house along the way is just a temporary home.

Even for people who are constantly on the move and don't have a "home", they can still wish to go back into the past. Home is where you feel safe and are surrounded by the people who mean the most to you.

Home can be something we are working towards because we want to recreate everything we once had. We can try so hard to make a house into a home, but if the right people aren't there, then you still might find yourself longing for this ideal inside your head.

So, if you're thinking that you want to go home right now, just realize that you may be missing people and memories more than you're wanting to be in a specific place.