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A reflection on the concept of HOME

It’s definitely an arduous task to define “home”. I would attempt to say that home is one’s personal territory. The problem with this definition is that it can be much more than a place. The sense of home develops out of several circumstances, which include all kinds of experiences we have through life.
Each one of these experiences leaves a mark which, either good or bad, helps build the concept of home. One of the classical events which can affect the idea of home is migration. People leave the place where they used to live and have to start all over again. Some of them succeed in finding a new home from home. Others never feel comfortable in their host country, which means they can’t help thinking about what they left behind – their own identity and roots. Consequently, feeling at home in a foreign country depends on several factors such as the way this country regards immigrants, the language barrier and also the effort people make to integrate themselves. This way, although some people cannot be really happy far from their homeland, for others home is where they decide to start again.
The real value of home is sometimes hard to define because it is a very subjective concept, which can have all sorts of meanings, according to the person who’s expressing his/her opinion. I would also add that, even so, it can be rather ambiguous as one can feel home in so many different ways depending on the stage of life he/she is experiencing.
Due to its subjectivity and complexity, the concept of home has inspired several authors and songwriters. To give an example, George Moore said that “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it”. This means that sometimes we are only able to fully understand the important role home plays in our lives when we are far away. Moreover, what we keep on looking for in distant places is often closer than we could imagine. The famous German novelist Hermann Hesse pointed out quite a different perspective on the idea of home. In “Demian” (1919), he said that “One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world feels like home for a time”. Hesse seems to regard home as a utopian concept – we can only experience and understand a small part of it. It is an ephemeral feeling – not an everlasting one. A further example is the US playwright J. H. Payne, who wrote a popular song called “Home Sweet Home” (1927). It contains the well-known line “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”.
When thinking of home, common sense tends to associate it with a cosy place, where we can feel comfortable and safe. Such a place is, most of the times, the first house we live in because it’s where our family and our whole life are. We know that door will always be opened for us to come in and say “Hi! I’m home!”. In fact, the state of a person’s home has been known to psychologically influence their behaviour, emotions and overall mental health. This happens mainly because humans are generally creatures of habit.
As far as I’m concerned, home is much more than that because you can feel at home even in a distant place. Or you can have a place which is really special for you and which you can call home. Someone said that “home is where the heart is…”. Well, our heart can be anywhere in the world… Even in the strangest places…
The whole idea of home is connected with a sense of belonging not only to a place but also to a set of circumstances which we associate with that particular place. These circumstances can be either material or spiritual just like feeling at home can be either physical or emotional.
Taking everything into account, the main question is: What does home mean to you? A place? A person? A feeling? A scent? A song? A still unanswered question?