Where is Your Home?

A home can have several meanings, depending on who you ask.

“Home is where the heart is” implies that your true home is in the place or with the person you love most. Personally, I believe one can have many homes.

I partly travel to find more places to call home. Often I can sense at once whether I feel at home in a certain city. New York, Paris and London felt like home right away. Other cities grow on me as I get to know them. Sometimes they reveal sides of themselves that makes it clear they’re not what I’m looking for at all. That’s when it’s time to move on.

In one way, my home is also within myself and the journey I travel.

Howard G. Franklin in ‘Excerpt from Truth’, the last chapter of An Irish Experience:

What is home anyway? Is it a place, a town or city or neighborhood where you were born, or grew up, or lived a long time? Geography that is fragrant with memory and desire, the place to which the compass always points, or you visit in nightly dreams, or always aim to return to, no matter how far the ship drifts off course?…Or is home simply a special spot inside the heart where it makes lakes of love? A safe harbor of unifying emotion, within which you are known, and accepted, and belong? Or even, maybe…is it both? I mean, part of each? Or could we have more than one?

Taylor Davidson on ‘What is the meaning of home?’ in Questions, Answered:

Home is where you are comfortable. In that sense, you may have many “homes”, impermanent and unstationary by time, place, people, context and expectations. Should there only be one “home”, that represents eternal comfort and belonging?

In my case, where I “grew up”, where I am living, where I consider myself from, where my family is, and even that special place, are all different and endlessly changing. I carry my home, my comfort, my grace deep inside, ready to spread it around any physical place that I may reside.

Feyza Yuksel, gr. 8, American School of Warsaw, on ‘Where is Your Home?’ in Skipping Stones Magazine:

Home is the place where everyone feels warm, comfortable, relaxed and secure! Even though sometimes people don’t really notice its value, home has indeed a very important role in everyone’s life. I strongly believe that every single person has felt the relief of coming home after a long tiring day. Yet everyone has different understanding, a different description of home, for home is not always necessarily where you live.

In the end scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L Jackson) sit in a fast food joint eating breakfast. Part of the dialogue:

                                  VINCENT

                       So you're serious, you're really

                       thinking about quitting?

                                  JULES

                       The life?    

                                 VINCENT
                       Yeah. 

                                  JULES

                       Most definitely.

                                 VINCENT

                       Fuck. What you're gonna do then?

                                  JULES

                       Well, that's what I've been sitting here

                       contemplating.  First, I'm gonna

                       deliver this case to Marsellus.

                       Then, basically, I'm just gonna walk the

                       earth.

                                  VINCENT

                       What do you mean, walk the earth?

                                  JULES

                       You know, like Caine in "KUNG FU."

                       Walk from place to place, meet

                       people, get in adventures.

                                  VINCENT

                       And how long do you intend to walk the

                       earth?

                                  JULES

                       Until God puts me where he want me

                       to be.

                                  VINCENT

                       And what if he don't do that?

                                  JULES

                       If it takes forever, then I'll walk

                       forever.

                                  VINCENT

                       So you decided to be a bum?

                                  JULES

                       I'll just be Jules, Vincent -- no

                       more, no less.

One possible interpretation: when Jules talks about walking the earth, he secretly wishes he will eventually find a place to call home – his real home, where he’s meant to live. Or, he is merely content with traveling from place to place and might come to see the journey as his home.

On the whole, I believe home is where you feel most comfortable. Where is your home?

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2. The Ability to Be At Home Anywhere
3. Recent Reads: Unconventional Guides, A Curious Marrakech Home & GIVESEATTLE.ORG
4. An Irish Experience: Travel Tales Flowing from History, Humor & the Search for Home
5. 20 Inspirational Travel Quotes