What is home?

A house? A place? A feeling? All three?

Home means different things to different people, and there are a great many people who spend their whole lives asking this question, creating art, stories, music, and all manner of beautiful things in pursuit of an answer.

Knowing the impermanence of everything, I don’t think home is a singular location, at least not physically. I think home is a sense of contentment within yourself, whether that’s in memories or feelings evoked by being in a certain place, or being able to find a sense of peace and calm wherever you might be in the world. What you consider home in this moment, somewhere from your childhood perhaps, feels that way because it’s the default place for peace or safety. There are a great many childhood homes however that would have been decidedly unsafe, and those who grew up in them would be unlikely to call those places home I’m sure.

All that to say, your own answer or feelings about this might change; that despite feeling at home in one place, something unsettling or distressing might make you seek it out again. Heartbreak & loss, two examples that immediately spring to mind; Somewhere that once felt like home now feeling anything but.

The same too can be said for work, a place that might once have given you a sense of purpose and safety, no longer a space you feel contained by. There is a huge shift happening in the way the world works with the emergence of new technologies, and a great many things will change, including our sense of home, and belonging.

My hope is, that despite all the fear, and how unsettling things might feel, that I am able to contribute to a sense of hope; that peace and safety are possible for all, and that even my tiny contributions will be ripples in the pond of change for the better.

For now at least, I’m dreaming of an equitable and hopeful future, and maybe one day a sense of home for myself too.