"Where do I find a true home", he asked. "In your own heart", answered the old man.

 

This is the way Stockholm looked when I left for Australia. Colourful, deep autumn hues, mysterious afternoon light, crisp air, and entirely enchanting.

My intention was to visit Australia for six months, but alas...., I am still here 30 odd years later.

My first impression of Australia can be summed up in two words: brown and hot.

A week or so later, I could add another word: deadly.

Seemed to me that there was an insurmountable amount of insects, creepy crawlers, snakes, creatures in the water, in the air, and on land, who all could potentially kill you.

But, and there was a big but, the people seemed very friendly, easy going, and once I saw the ocean, the long stretching beaches, the palm trees, and the blue, blue sky, I could add another word: enticing.

I have now lived here in Australia much longer than I lived in Sweden, but if someone asks me where "home" is, I still find it hard to give a definitive answer.

I can give an address, but "home" seems to be so much more than that. "Home is where the heart is" so wrote Pliny the Elder, or perhaps "My home is in my heart"?

Some suggest that "home is where you feel free to be yourself", "home is where you feel safe", or "home is not a place, home is people".

On the other hand, home may be the place where you grew up, it may be a building, a community, etc. or perhaps it may be all of the above?

 "The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." (Maya Angelo) 

Perhaps, home is less about where we are, and more to do with who we are?

Could it be possible to be homeless in a physical sense yet still have a meta-physical home?

Like a snail brings its "home" with it everywhere (thinking of one with a shell), do we have a "shell" as well that we bring with us although it is not of the physical but rather the meta-physical kind?

(the heart =shell)

If "Home is where your heart is", then where ever we are, or where ever we go, we will always have our homes with us. For me, this sounds very comforting, because there may be times in our lives when we may have to leave (for any number of reasons) the place that we have considered to be our physical home, and find ourselves a new one. Some of us may have experiences of our physical homes as chaotic, and unhappy places, then if our homes are in our hearts, then perhaps we can leave those chaotic, and unhappy places behind, and find ourselves somewhere else where we can feel safe and at peace.

At its most basic, may I suggest that a home is a shelter.

(A shelter; "something beneath, behind, or within which a person, animal, or thing is protected.")

 Somewhere to hang your hat, somewhere to put your feet up, somewhere to rest, somewhere to eat a meal, somewhere to gather your thoughts, somewhere to be with your nearest and dearest, somewhere to feel safe. For some of us that may mean a mansion, for others a cottage, an apartment, a cabin, a hut, a tent, a doorway, or a good cardboard box.

Whether we feel "at home" or not in our shelter (whatever that shelter is) often depends on how "at home" we feel with who we are, and the state of our hearts and minds.

 

"It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home." (Unknown)

"Take the time to come home to yourself every day."  (Robin Casarjean)

 

 

I grew up in Sweden, I live in Australia, but my home is in my heart.