According to my cell phone, as of today I don’t have a home. A home number, anyway.
My parents finally decided to get rid of their land line and go completely cellular. Though I live with them, I rarely used the home phone, so its lack of existence doesn’t affect me greatly in a physical sense.
Deleting “Home” from my cell phone sure felt strange though.
“Home” is not a number in my cell phone; I know that.
Nor is it a house, apartment, igloo, or any other structure.
At this stage in my life, I don’t know exactly how to define the concept of “home.” Yes, I live with my parents, and compared to many in the same situation, we get along quite well. In conversation, I still refer to it as “home,” but I don’t always feel like I believe it.
Singing about the idea of home seems to be a popular choice for musicians. Without much work, I thought of 3 songs by different artists, all entitled “Home.”
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros’ “Home”:
Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is whenever I’m with you
Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is when I’m alone with you
I love the song, but their definition of “home,” as being with you significant other, doesn’t apply to me at this point. Michael Buble’s song Home seems to imply much the same thing, and though I think these definitions of home are valid, they’re not valid for me right now.
If “home” is defined so narrowly as being with a significant other, I know a lot of people who are “homeless.” But I don’t that’s the only way it can, or should, be defined.
Maybe Philip Phillips’ Home gets the closest of any of these three songs:
Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be foundJust know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home
Maybe all these songs are onto a similar thread–though traditionally I think of home as a location or structure, it’s more about who you’re with, and what you make of where you are. Maybe home is a feeling, not a state of location.
In that sense, home isn’t external, but internal. I knew “home” wasn’t the number in my cell phone, but neither is it the house I’m sitting in. Pieces of it can be found in my family, pieces of it in my friends, spread over the country and globe though they are, pieces of it can be found in my church, my coworkers, and community as a whole.
Maybe home is what you make it.
Til next time…
~Brianna!~
p.s. How would you define “home”? Has it changed over time?
The Art of Becoming 
Home is where I put the Christmas tree. 🙂
Yes, love it. =)
Ah, the “significant other” home. I’ve realized lately that perhaps that definition of home is why I often feel so ill at east and filled with unrest when I think of my living situation. I have no one special to come home to. Sure, I have a cat and a roommate, but this ‘someone’ is different. My roommate and I share a house, but we don’t share a life, and that makes a world of difference. Home, for me, seems to be this strange place of floating between calling the house I grew up in “home” and finding that “forever home” in someone’s heart. On other words, it is a rather unpleasant place to be.
I think it is time to re-examine that definition and perhaps create a new one. Thanks for this post, Brianna! 🙂
Yes, floating–that’s a great way to describe it. My definition is in a state of flux as well, and I’m not even sure I’ve expressed that well here. And thank YOU, my friend, for commenting and being you. =)
After I read this post I immediately thought of my favorite song about home… This Is Home by Switchfoot (http://youtu.be/N0ykm1v9xbU) … At a time when I was trying to spread my wings and get away from home, it was funny because on more than one occasion I heard this song as I was going and as I was coming back to my little town. They say home is where you lay your head, hang your hat, that home is where your heart is, and home is what you make it… No matter what we call home on this earth (because some have great homes, some have bad homes, some have no place to call home…), we have an eternal home that far outweighs them all- and when we get there I think we’ll know what home truly is, and if you’re me, hopefully it’ll be a little bit like Narnia 🙂
-Amy, a small town girl with big dreams and a big heart for good writing, good music and God
Oh, I really hope our eternal home is like Narnia! Love that thought.