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”.