A person may wonder where home is or may wonder what turns four walls into a home. They may even speculate what the concept really means. Is it where you were born and raised or a thousand miles away? Is it close to relatives or far away? Is it your homeland or a new one that you’ve adopted? Does the mind provide the answer or is it the heart? How often do we simply take a moment to contemplate this small fact? When does a person call a place a home? According to George Moore, a man can travel the world over in search of what he needs and return home to find it. The thing is: we can travel the entire world only to discover that home was the place we first left behind. Others find a home after travelling for a while. It is never quite the same for every person. It is a private notion that we all view in a very personal way. John Howard Payne (1791-1852) believed that “mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”. Isn’t it insightful that the concept is intertwined with our own notions of retreat, of our own notions of shelter? And then there’s my favourite: A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers. An outstanding thousand year-old remark, spoken by a Greek Athenian comedian, called Aristophanes (450 BC - 388 BC). This is to a large extent still a very solid argument, hence the fact that in order to be happy, we all need to flourish, as individuals and as professionals, so that we may achieve our own ray of sunshine. Others may argue that home is not a place, but people, as stated by Lois McMaster Bujold in 1991 in “Barrayar”. Or even that not going home is the same thing as being already dead, like E. Catherine Tobler asserts in the Vanishing Act. In a more practical sense I can even agree with Joyce Maynard in “Domestic Affairs” when she states that a good home must be made, not bought. Our own shell can be bought or leased. That our home can be interior decorated by custom design or by our own creativity. It may very well be extraordinarily big in proportions or incredibly tiny. But it has to be, and I think we can all agree on this, our own safe haven from the outside world. The place we all run away to seek comfort. The place we all escape to relax our weary bones as sung by Otis Redding in his song “sitting on the dock of the bay”. Oops, does that count?
Friday, 25 April 2008
There’s no place like home...
A person may wonder where home is or may wonder what turns four walls into a home. They may even speculate what the concept really means. Is it where you were born and raised or a thousand miles away? Is it close to relatives or far away? Is it your homeland or a new one that you’ve adopted? Does the mind provide the answer or is it the heart? How often do we simply take a moment to contemplate this small fact? When does a person call a place a home? According to George Moore, a man can travel the world over in search of what he needs and return home to find it. The thing is: we can travel the entire world only to discover that home was the place we first left behind. Others find a home after travelling for a while. It is never quite the same for every person. It is a private notion that we all view in a very personal way. John Howard Payne (1791-1852) believed that “mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”. Isn’t it insightful that the concept is intertwined with our own notions of retreat, of our own notions of shelter? And then there’s my favourite: A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers. An outstanding thousand year-old remark, spoken by a Greek Athenian comedian, called Aristophanes (450 BC - 388 BC). This is to a large extent still a very solid argument, hence the fact that in order to be happy, we all need to flourish, as individuals and as professionals, so that we may achieve our own ray of sunshine. Others may argue that home is not a place, but people, as stated by Lois McMaster Bujold in 1991 in “Barrayar”. Or even that not going home is the same thing as being already dead, like E. Catherine Tobler asserts in the Vanishing Act. In a more practical sense I can even agree with Joyce Maynard in “Domestic Affairs” when she states that a good home must be made, not bought. Our own shell can be bought or leased. That our home can be interior decorated by custom design or by our own creativity. It may very well be extraordinarily big in proportions or incredibly tiny. But it has to be, and I think we can all agree on this, our own safe haven from the outside world. The place we all run away to seek comfort. The place we all escape to relax our weary bones as sung by Otis Redding in his song “sitting on the dock of the bay”. Oops, does that count?
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