Michael Buble sings in a song: "I wanna go home, just let me go home...''
For some of us, we know exactly what we mean with home and where it is. Some of us may even say ''Home is where I lay my head down'', or ''Home is where my heart is'', or ''My home is in my heart''.
Home has many different meanings: a particular place (among many), a place where one resides permanently, the place where one grew up, a place where one can relax and be one self, a place where one feels safe, a familiar and comfortable place, etc.etc.
(There are some of us who are perhaps still looking for ''home'', some of us who grew up in places that were chaotic, scary, dangerous, and void of love, affection and comfort.)
When I was 16 years old and experienced what I now know must have been a panic attack, I received a glimpse of understanding into that although home is a place, it is also ''metaphysical'' place.
It was no longer enough for me to just be at home in order to feel safe and relaxed, somehow I had to find a way to create a safe space inside of me (as in an emotional/metaphysical space) regardless of where I was or who I was with.
Closing my eyes, I can still see myself sitting on my bed, feeling shaky, lost, confused, and wondering how one goes about the task of creating a ''home'' that exists only internally, in an invisible haystack called emotions.
(Without going in to details, the home in which I grew up in was not void of turbulence, emotional upheavals or crisis's, neither was my childhood a particularly easy one, but I did feel safe in my home.)
Some say that it is in our nature to seek a place where we belong, where we feel safe and secure, a place where we can close the door and shut out the rest of the world and all its worries.
Some say that home is not really a place, home is people, people who love you and accept you warts and all.
Some say that home is not a place, nor a person or persons, it's a feeling.
Alain de Botton has this to say: ''We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us with desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.''
Regardless of whether we live under a bridge or a cardboard box, or any kind of temporary housing arrangement, many of us often find that we seem to carry with us a ''nesting'' tendency.
(Even if what we have is only a cardboard box, a sleeping bag and a few other bits and pieces, many of us will try to make a ''nest'' with those few items, or something although very rudimentary,...feels to us as ''home''.)
During a particularly difficult time in my life, my ''nest'' consisted of a mattress under a dining table in a friends apartment and my wardrobe that of plastic bags hidden behind a door. Spartan as it was, after a few days, it did feel like home to me.
I have lost count of how many times I have shifted from one ''nest'' to another and I am not really sure of exactly when the phrase ''My home is in my heart'' popped up, what I do know however, is that that phrase has helped me to find a space within me that I call home regardless of my exterior circumstances.
(Perhaps, should you need it, it may help you too?)
Holding a hot cup of coffee in his hands, he smiled his winning smile and nodded his head in my direction. I walked up to him and said: Theo, you look happy, something good has happened?
In his heavily accented voice and grinning Theo answered: ''Yes, indeed sir, something very good.''
(Theo was one of the many homeless people who would come to our bus every Friday night and be given a hot drink, some food, and a warm blanket.)
''Tell me Theo, what is your good news? I asked.
''I now have an address again!! I have a job, only as a dishwasher and not engineer, but because I have a job, I can now look for accommodation!!! Theo shouted excitedly.
''Fantastic!! I shouted back.
(Theo left his home country because he was offered a job as a building engineer here in Australia, and because he had relatives already established here on a permanent visa, he took the plunge.
Three months later the business collapsed, he lost his job, and losing his job meant that he could not pay rent. Not being able to pay rent, he was told by his relatives to leave, and since he had only been in the country for a few months, he was not entitled to any assistance from the government.
He ended up homeless. In order to be able to receive any financial assistance, he had to have a permanent address, but in order for him to have an address, he had to have a job. Theo spent his time from dawn to dusk for months trying to get a job, any job, without any success, but, he never gave up trying, and he never complained.)
''Well done Theo, I wish you all the best with everything, you so deserve it! Let us know next time you come how it all went, I said to a beaming Theo.
''I will, and I will give you my address too,'' and with those words he walked out of the car park where our bus was stationed.
Theo's experience made me acutely aware of something that I had never thought of before; the importance of having a permanent address.
Living, as many of us are, in a meritocracy, it can be easy to become judgmental and harsh when it comes to ''homeless people''. As in: ''If people have a lot, it's because they earned/deserved it, so then it's only logical to conclude that those who have nothing, earned/deserved that as well.''
In my view, people can become homeless for a myriad of different reasons, none of which may necessarily have anything to do with earning or deserving it.
Life, may I suggest, is a hypothesis, not a foregone conclusion, sometimes things happens over which we have little say (war, natural disaster, sickness, drought, famine, etc.etc.) and suddenly our circumstances have changed.
Regardless of our exterior circumstances, if our home is in our heart,
we are always at home.
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