Home is where?

When I first set off on a solo mission with my backpack, my cousin gave me a letter to read on the plane. A few words in particular really stuck with me:

Home is where the heart is,
Your heart is always with you,
You are always home.

Clichéd as it may be, his appeal to my love of logic was comforting. Although it got me thinking… I don’t always feel at home, so there’s got to be something more to it than that.

Maybe home is where the heart is open, I assumed. But opening your heart to just anyone can be dangerous. As a young female travelling alone, I quickly learnt that an open heart is easily misinterpreted as vulnerability and naïveté. In such circumstances, I certainly didn’t feel at home.

Nevertheless, it still seemed like a worthwhile concept. That was, until the homesickness kicked in. Now you don’t even need to be far from home to feel like that; the Welsh have a word for the homesickness felt for some place or time in the past that may never have existed – Hiraeth. If my beloved cliché were true, possession of a heart would prevent homesickness from arising.

Then it hit me. It’s not enough to have a heart; it’s not even enough to open your heart. Home is where open hearts can meet on common ground. A home isn’t created by walls, rather home is attained by tearing down the walls between you and others. Anywhere you feel comfortable enough to let your guard down will feel like home. That said home to one person might be hell to another.

The key to finding your home away from home is to follow your passion. Having frequented bush doofs since I was 17, I am passionate about electronic music festivals. I love to dance all night in the sand and play with my hula hoop. When I attend parties like these I stumble upon other people who share my passion, our hearts connect on common ground and we both feel at home.

Recently I was at a psytrance event in Montreal named after the Black Sabbath track, Fairies Wear Boots. 16,000 kilometers away from my hometown, I felt very much at home. Dressed as a forest fairy, I shared a moment seated on a carpet with a genie. His English was about as good as my French, and we could hardly converse above the music. Despite that, we shared a passion for the music and felt comfortable enough to spend time together. In like manner I find members of my global family all over the world.

Thanks to globalization and technological advancement, even the most obscure passions can lead you home. Today, it’s entirely reasonable for a grown man who loves My Little Pony to find sanctuary in the Brony community online: it may seem unusual but the last U.S. Brony convention had over 10,000 attendees. Regardless of the specific passion, passion itself bridges hearts to create a homey atmosphere.

To wrap up one cliché with another, a man’s home is his castle. By pursuing your passion you will surely find palatial rooms you never knew existed.

Becky Rowe is a twenty-something passionate about writing, philosophy, holistic living, truth seeking, the Earth and a whole lot more.