The Meaning of Home
A home is comforting and secure. The home is were we feel familiar around and safe around. It is not just our house or where we are living. A home can transcend four walls and a ceiling. It is not just a place to sleep, cook, and eat. A home is much more than that, it is who we really are.
In the text Themes in Contemporary Art, Gill Perry and Paul Wood tried to dissect many works that had to do with domestic space. While looking deep into Louise Bourgeois’s Passage Dangereux they tried to explain what the home is. They say it is “…a more personalized environment than the idea of a house or a building.” They explain how houses become home after people live inside them and gain comfort and security. The home represents your status. It is true that people need to live in a house to gain appreciation of it but I think a home is not just a location or a place. I think it is beyond that and it transcends the physical world.
The idea that the home does not have to be a specific structure or building dates back before we humans had no true permanent settlement. This was the time before large societies came together and before people even owned property. Instead people migrated and moved to hunt and survive. Every structure they built they had to tear down or abandon. This was because as the seasons changed their source of food would move. Yet even though they had no land to call their own there was still a home to be had. The home they had was much more simple then today. It was just the bare minimum, which is comfort and security that they found through other people.
As time went by people began to settle and construct buildings, which they lived their whole lives in. They would raise a family and collect all of their comforts and place it in these buildings. This process was then passed on to the next generation and the comforts of the home began to evolve into a building, which we came to call a house.
This physical structure that we call a house, is important to the home. Although it isn’t necessarily the home, the house can contain everything that we feel comfortable around. All of the comforts will create that feeling of home and the security of home. Many associate the house with the home. The house represents who we are and what we have collected throughout the years. It is a place we know that we can truly express our true selves without fear. The house an important embodiment of what our home is. The house is also an important place for us because of the memories we make there. These memories are unique and they cannot be found anywhere else except in the house. For many people their house is their only home because of the memories that were made in it and memories that are stored in it.
But for some people even the house is not a home. Some of the memories that a house contains can be painful and traumatic. These feelings a person can get will ruin the feelings of comfort and security. In that sense a house can actually break the feeling of home. For instance if a child was abused in their house and they grew up they would want to move away from all the bad memories and find a new place suitable to be their home where they may feel more comfortable and safe in.
An important factor into making a house into a home is memories. But memories can also be found in objects that we carry. A wristwatch that once belonged to your grandfather and is being pasted down can carry many memories with it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the memories are yours and that the watch creates the feeling of home. This just means that is important and can play in helping you identify what you really find comforting and what you really think your home is. So even just memories cannot be a home because a home is still something more. Instead it is the home that creates the memories.
Because the home is not just a building it can be many things that give people a sense of comfort and security. The home can be both physical and imaginative. It can be purely intellectual and some may find the home in the arts. Through painting, literature, singing, and dancing people can find something that they feel comfortable doing. This allows them to feel more at home while performing a number of different arts. But is doesn’t have to only be artistic things it can also be activities. A cook can feel at home in the kitchen and an architect, in a studio. These activities give these people meaning and can connect them to others that feel the same way. These people can then build a bond and a relationship together. The connection that they have will make them comfortable and will become a home.
Communication and relationships that people have are also an important part of the home. Without other people there would be no home and no point into having comforts or securities. Friends and family give each other comforts because of their familiarity and memories they share. The memories that people have of each other is important to knowing just how they feel around each other and how comfortable they are. If you were to go into a new area or new situation wouldn’t it be better to bring a friend along? That is one way that friends can bring the feeling of home with them.
This feeling of having a friend near has changed in this century due to new advancements in technology. The home is now mobile and carried in your back pocket. People can now communicate to each other and be comfortable talking to each other in just about any location. Even in traditionally public spaces that generally are not homes they can talk to each other as if they were. Now instead of physically bringing a friend along to feel more comfortable and more at home, we can now just bring a cell phone with a friend on the other line to make us feel more comfortable and more at home.
Other advances not just the cell phone have also improved the feeling of home. The Internet has changed how we speak and how we interact with one another. The Internet allows many people a cheap and instantaneous way of keeping in touch with one another. People can use it to send e-mails and to chat with people from different counties without leaving their own house. In some cultures it is the only way to keep the home alive. There are people in Iraq right now that are so scared to leave their houses because of all of the violence going on that they now just go online and have video chats with their friends.
But what does having a home truly mean? It cannot just be a building. It cannot just be simple comforts and having security. Memories are only a small part of the home. Friends and family are also important but they are only a piece to the puzzle of the home. So what is the home? How do we know we are at home? Lets examine what it means to be outside of the home first.
Being outside of the home we don’t feel as comfortable. We don’t want to do anything embarrassing or anything to make us insecure. We may conjure up memories but we would rarely act upon them when outside of the home. Even with friends and family on our side we may still not always feel secure. So in essence we don’t really feel as ourselves. We feel unnatural. Being outside of the home we act differently and we aren’t true to ourselves. We carry false personas everywhere that isn’t our home. When we enter a classroom we aren’t allowed to do certain things or we won’t say certain things. When we meet someone new we put on a mask and try to show them a side of us that is far different from the guy sitting at home eating nachos in front of the tube. So what does it mean to be at home?
Is being at home just that? Is it just being what we do when we are at home? I believe that is what the home really is. I believe the meaning of home is when we truly are who we truly are.
