Within the whirlwind of life around you, there is a place you can come home to. Your address is where you live usually. But is your address your home?

Address: A Place You Can Come Home To



Within the whirlwind of life around you, there is a place you can come home to. Your address is where you live usually. But is your address your home?

You cannot find this place called “home” by going outward, finding another location, looking for a new house, painting, repairing, renovating, and revitalizing your present one. You cannot find it “where you lay your hat”, and even if you could, most of us don’t wear hats routinely anymore. You cannot find “home” next door, down the street, around the corner, in the next town, state, or another country, or even at the house of a friend or relative necessarily.

Being “at home” is a journey inward that takes time and patience, experience, and understanding of ourselves, others, and a larger than life universe of actions and reactions. It is a perception of a clear, focused, yet unfocused, relaxing, nurturing space within each individual. And it is also a special, valued space where we can feel loved and love others; loved ones, co-workers, friends, and even strangers, that each of us can learn to support, appreciate, and re-nurture. It is a place of solace, peace, resolve, rest, and relaxation. A place where we can “be alone”, sometimes even when there are others around us.

That old cliché that “home is where the heart is” may be more significant than just being an old throw-about saying. When we “put our heart into” something, it usually is taken to mean that we apply all our energies, all our focus, all of our best intentions, strengths, abilities, and talents into something that is very near and dear to us. Something that is so important to us to see that the highest pinnacle is reached, that we selflessly give our blood, sweat, and tears, our “all”, as it is so aptly suggested.

“Home” is usually thought of as a place that you would lay down your life, and die to defend against enemy, intruder, or foe of any kind. “A man’s home is his castle” proudly states a defensive, protective attitude, alluding that the man who lives there is a king, ruler, boss, leader, warrior of some kind. “Home” can be as small as a tiny corner of a mind locked away or as big as a country or world shared with millions of other people, animals, and things. The size is not as important usually as the condition in which it is kept or perceived to be in.

“Home” is a place where you can bring your closest friends, entertain your worst enemies civilly, “network” with business associates, hold committee meetings, card games, poker night, host a barbeque, stage a wedding, and most any other significant event that happens in a normal lifetime. These events go “hand in hand” with falling in love, perpetuating life cycles, children, and memories as the years roll past. Sometimes it is even easier to let these events and the time they encompass surround us, and envelope us in a lifestyle of busy-ness, and when this suddenly grinds to a seemingly sudden halt, we are left with the “empty nest syndrome”, either with our spouse or significant other, or more oftentimes than not…by ourselves, alone.

This aloneness can be deafening at times, peaceful serenity at others. It can be an enlightening, freeing, surge of independence, or a crippling, depressed, dark, petrifying existence. This place can be just a house, a prison, or it can be “home”. The difference lies in the individual, and how they have prioritized, prepared, experienced, resolved, and organized, their belief system, their faith, their integrity, and their character. It is one of the final tests of life, and one that can determine how we spend the rest of our hours here on earth.

So next time someone asks you “where you live”, or what place you call home, will you share with them your address, your place of living, or your home?