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 “A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”

Unknown

“Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to”

John Ed Pearce

Lately, I have been captivated by getting all my ducks in a row, so that I can embark on the next adventure in my life.

As I’ve been preparing to leave Hawaii yet again, one of the biggest questions on my mind is:

What is home?

This question is especially important, since I’ve lived a rather transient lifestyle over the past several years.

I was born and raised in Hawaii for 18 years, went to college for 2 years in Washington, DC, then studied abroad in Shanghai, China for 1/2 year, after which I went back to DC to finish the 1.5 years left of college.  Post graduation, I moved to New York City to work for 1 year, then moved to Dallas 1.5 years to take care of my mother while she was battling cancer, and for the past 6 months I have bounced around a bit.  I visited Massachusetts, Maryland, DC, New York, and Washington State before making it back to Hawaii, where I’ve been for 4 months.

Now… I’m off to Sydney, Australia and I’m not sure why. 

Part of it is because I was bit by the travel bug several years ago and this is a great time for me to go off and see the world.  Another part of this trip fits in with the whole Looking For My Life theme here.  Finally, maybe another aspect of this trip is that I’m looking for a new home. 

I digress, the real question still remains.

What is home?

Home is where you grew up

This is probably the most obvious definition of “home.”

Where we grew up is often a place many people consider as their home.

Home is the place where in your childhood memories.  Home is the place where you fell off the swing at your elementary school playground.  Home is the place where you had your first piano recital.  Home is where everyone knows you.

Home is also where your friends and family are

Part of what made the place you grew up as your “home” is the people that you shared these childhood memories with at the time.

What if everyone or many people that you knew growing up moved to another city?  Would you still call the city you grew up in as home?

Maybe, but home is also the place where the people that matter to us are living.  In this case, if you grew up in New York, and your friends and family moved to say Los Angeles, L.A. may not feel like “home” to you, but it’ll be home in the sense that the people you care about live there.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” – Robert Frost

 Stemming from where your family is located, home is also your safety net so to speak.

When I left Hawaii for college and my family was moving houses, my dad said to me, “You’ll always have a home with me.”

Home, at that point, became partly defined as a place in which I could go back to if I needed.

In fact, I’ve been staying here with my dad in Hawaii for the past few months.  It’s probably a bit longer than he’d like, but it’s been nice having this safety net while I’ve been getting ready for the next portion of my life’s journey.

Home is where your heart is

You may be split between the place you grew up and the place your friends and family are living.  If the two aren’t the same, it may be slightly more difficult to know what “home” is to you.

Alternatively, maybe your family moved around a lot as you were growing up.  Perhaps you lived in Chicago, London, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires as a child.  Which one of those places is your home? 

In this case, home is where your heart is at in life.  If you feel a gut reaction and inner connection to a place, that could very well be your home.

Home is where you make it

As I expressed my frustrations to my mother one time, about not returning to the “home” that I grew up in, and having family members move around a bit, she said to me:

“Home is where you make it.”

At the time, prior to my departure for college, my idea of home was to come back to the same place I grew up in as a child.

After hearing what my mom had said, and reflecting upon those words now, it couldn’t possibly ring more true.

I’m off to see the world and perhaps find a new place to call my “home.”  The reality is not that I’m finding a home, but creating one.

Finally, perhaps even more beautiful is the fact that after we’ve built these homes in different places, they will be there forever both in memory and in reality.

Ultimately, the upshot of all of this is that you end up with many homes, not just one.

** As a side note, this was going to the entry for my birthday, but instead I wrote about the 25 Lessons I’ve Learned After 25 Years of Living.  **