Home Is
Home is a way of feeling. Home is a way of feeling less alone, even if there’s no-one there but you.
They say a man’s house is his castle. After you’ve been homeless, you thank Heaven for every brick. Pliny the Elder said home is where the heart is. After you’ve been homeless, you’re grateful to have found where it’s been hiding all these years. Helen Rowland said home is any four walls that enclose the right person. After you’ve been homeless, it changes your life to know the right person is you. Goethe said one is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. After you’ve been homeless, even the peasant’s plough and straw bed is peace and prosperity beyond your dreams.
I started out with nothing, and I still got most of it left.
Home is a shelter in a storm. Home is oasis in a desert. Home is a glimpse of afternoon sun after working down the mines. Home is a moment of reprieve in a lifetime of worry. Home is the only place where nothing else matters, because you are safe.
Home is the last bastion of free will. Home does everything that running away couldn’t accomplish.
You first walk through the door and Providence smiles upon you. You are thrust headlong into an incredible sensation, the scintillating knowledge that you are home. As if seduced by a persuasive whisper, your tension and worry drips away. The drapery falls, and you realise:
You don’t have to smile, and you don’t have to scowl.
You don’t have to be white; you don’t have to be black.
You don’t have to act gay; you don’t have to act straight.
You don’t have to love, and you don’t have to hate.
You don’t have to believe what you’re told.
You can be true to yourself, for the first time.
All the labels evaporate under your radiant heat, every particle in your body excited to be free at last. The scaffold of thought buckles as you realise you are the author of your own experience. My home was where I realised that I was a person like everyone else. My home was built the moment I knew I had what I needed to start living for me.
My home is the place where I can lock my doors and windows and prance around with no pants on. My home is the place where Bill Posters will not be prosecuted. My home is guitars and harmonicas. My home is water, food, and prayer. My home is free love. My home is the bill of rights. My home is the Louvre. My home is the Library of Alexandria. My home is the Pantheon. My home is the Forum, Circus Maximus and Caesar’s palace all at once.
My home is the Launchpad, and I am the Lunar Lander.
With a little imagination, my home is whatever I want it to be. It’s my home.
Everyone needs a home.
