There is No Place like Home

A home is a place where a person or a group of persons or even animals, for that matter, could find a source of comfort, rest, and storage of personal belongings. It is a place of residence where love is evident and relationship among the individuals living in one roof is considered harmonious and therapeutic. It is a bit different from the term house because the element of love and the sense of belongingness are present in contrast to a house wherein it is just merely a structure immaterial of the presence of love and harmony among the family living in it. Everyone in this world somehow needs a home to live in and this is also applied even to animals. Animals also have a place to consider their home, whether it is in the natural setting such as the corals in the case of fishes or in an aquarium in the case of domesticated fishes. Inside our homes is a place of relaxation and enjoyment. It is a safe haven and a source of refuge. Even if you are taken by your destiny to any part of the world, still, there is no place like home. The memories, whether good or bad are all witnessed by the four walls of the place that you are living which you call home. No five star hotels can compare its value. Even if an individual is living in a place considered to be very luxurious, the environment of home and the smell of its aged scent will always bring about a feeling of safety and security. This is very evident among individuals who have lived on countries far away from their respective homelands wherein you could see it in their reactions and their faces when going back home to their country of origin. The familiar faces in the neighborhood, the old candy store just around the corner, and the loving family of an individual sums up all the reasons why one’s home will always be a special place in his or her heart.

The term home can also refer to other types of residence such as foster homes, a place for children with no biological father and mother with the goal of possible adoption from foster parents, geriatric homes, a place where elderly individuals with no possible care taker in their respective residential homes are found and are properly given care and attention until the time of their death awaits them, and home for the mentally-impaired or psychiatric asylum, where people with mental disorders, such as Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder, are appropriately taken cared of by health care professionals giving them their much needed psychiatric drugs and different therapies to help them manage their disease condition.

An individual’s home may have a possible influence on his or her behavior and attitude. Let us say, for instance, a home that is very much organized and neat will in some way make an individual living in that particular home an organized and neat person as well. In contrast, a home that is messy and unorganized will also influence an individual living in that particular home a messy and unorganized person. Another example of which is a home that is filled with musically-inclined individuals. Therefore, it is most likely that individuals living in that home will have a very high probability of having to like music and be musically-inclined too. Last example is a home that is characterized by drug and alcohol abuse. Although the use of prohibited drugs and excessive intake of alcoholic beverages can cause detrimental effects to an individual’s health, having to live in a house where other individuals are constantly using these vices will most likely affect the behavior of an individual thereby influencing him or her to engage in the same practices. Most probably an individual will also become a drug addict and an alcohol abuser just like the rest of the family living at home.

Therefore, a person’s home environment is very influential in terms of attitude and behavior of a person. It shapes what a person is to be in the future. Aside from that, having to be miles away from your own home makes an individual feel homesick. Being oceans away for a very long period of time brings about homesickness, which has a very high tendency, by the way, to translate into actual illness. Ergo, it is definitely nothing like “home sweet home”.

The Real Essence of a Home Sweet Home

During our preschool years when our teacher gave us an assignment about showing to class a drawing of your home, we excitedly ask our parents to help us illustrate a simple house with four corners, a roof, a couple of windows with beautiful curtains and a door. Or perhaps as we grew older, we learned how to imagine a more well-off house with a white picket fence, a spacious backyard with a small gazebo at the center of grandmother’s garden and a mini basketball court. Many of us are still like a child who assumes that a home is basically a shelter for a family to live in. We never really tried to dig in the real essence of having a home not until we realized that it is in danger of breaking apart.

How many of us have ever experienced filling up the section in a particular form asking for our home address, the people who leave this section blank? Not everybody is fortunate to have a home. Many still are out there alone in a misty dark chilly night wanting to belong to a home. And some of them even spend the holidays with their family underneath a bridge on the cold dirt. On the other hand, did it ever occur in us being able to completely answer the section asking for our home address but did not feel like we could call our place a home? Not everyone is happy with his or her home. They may have a place to live but not a home where they will feel cared and loved, not alone and left out.

Building up a home is not as easy as constructing it with a pile of wood. A home is much more than just a roof over people’s heads—it plays a big part in shaping a person’s life. This is where an individual learned how to laugh at the crankiest joke, cry at the most touching story each family member has to share, celebrate with joy at different holidays and special occasions, gather around during bad times and enjoy an ordinary get-together.  Then we, consequently, appreciate the reasons of having a home, especially in times when we need a shelter from the storms in our lives. We realized that for as long as we have a home, we know we belong somewhere.

We loved our home just the way we have loved our family. We can have our mother and father, our brothers and sisters, our grandparents or any of our kith and kin stay under one roof but no matter how much we wanted them to stay forever since we can’t give up having good times together, we will soon begin to notice that one by one, each of them will have to leave the place you called home. We can’t live in your parents’ house for the rest of our lives either. That is why even ourselves have to leave too. We need to leave in order to start and build our own home and family.

Searching for a home you envision settling with a family of your own is a long process. Before moving in, you have to consider a lot of things like the location, the house itself, the history of the house, the safety and of course the affordability of the price. Don’t rush things because you don’t want to regret in the end. Besides, you don’t want to spend your hard-earned money ending up futile.

And if you are one of those unlucky people who need to move out into a home you have grown to love due to circumstances out of your control, you will experience mixed emotions from feelings of sadness and emptiness within you to high levels of nostalgia. You get upset leaving your friends behind, your social groups in school, your sense of belongingness and your memories, especially if you have treasured great childhood years.

A home is an abode waiting for you to return. It is a haven where your heart rests and where your family can dwell safely and cozily. At the end of the day, when you’re in your bed, warm and at ease, gazing into the darkness, it feels good to know that you are sharing a quiet night with the people you truly care about.