Home, Redefined

By Grace Carpenter on January 16, 2014
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Our perceptions of time change as we grow older. Our horizons begin to stretch farther into the distance, pushing our immediate reality deeper into the future. Our concerns revolve less around the next two weeks and more around the next twenty years.

Five years can shift your thoughts from “who am I going to prom with?” to “who am I going to spend my life with?” Another two can change “where am I going to school?” to “where am I going to live?” Three years after that, your pleasant “what posters should I hang in my room?” have become “does this house have hardwood floors?”

When we widen the lens through which we view our lives, the image of our lives deepens. Sometimes the subtle motions of our lives seem to expand and grow and morph into something vast, grand, even monstrous. Sometimes our daily tasks assume monumental significance, for no other reason than that we are coping with an ever more burdensome reality at every moment; as we develop, we take on new responsibilities, ideas, and identities, and sometimes the accumulations of time stick to us like barnacles. Sometimes our lives feel as if they are slipping by too quickly—sometimes, they are—and sometimes we wonder if we will ever catch up on life, before it takes off again, disappearing into an unseen wilderness into which we are bound to follow.

And that’s when the asphyxiation sets in. That’s when our throbbing ambition turns upon itself, and we wonder if we will ever get it right. That’s when we doubt everything we have ever done and will ever do, and we silently curse ourselves for reaching out into the grand vortex of the world at all. How do we respond to our swelling lives? How do we reconcile our pursuits, our distinct and hard-won dreams, with the sense of security we alternately shun and crave? Is there a way to briefly quiet such a wild world?

To the daring young doers who have ever felt anything like this—feeling dwarfed within the limitless universe, lost and floating like Sandra Bullock in Gravity—I advise you to stop. I advise you to cancel your plans. I advise you to put down your fried chicken/ice cream/martini (#ComfortFoodTime). I advise you put on some of your favorite laid-back music, and relax.

Because sometimes we need to simply relax. It sounds easy, but any modern twenty-something is painfully aware how difficult it really is. Aren’t we supposed to be productive? Aren’t we supposed to stop watching television and go outside? Aren’t we supposed to reach our potential and stay up all night so we don’t miss a beat?—but see, this is the problematic mindset, the one that’s slowly eating away at our generation. It’s a disease, the ceaseless “GO-GO-GO” being constantly pounded into our minds. For some reason, we seem to think that our resumés not only outline our lives, but actually define them. But since when did a piece of paper govern us, and when did it become taboo to not be busy? The world is big and scary sometimes, but what’s the point of living in it, if you’re wasting your life trying to charge it down?

Let’s take a break sometimes. Let’s find home. There is something so peaceful, so quietly sublime, about the tender turn of a gentle evening, about the rich pastures of a beloved home. Even while the world rages without, your world may settle within; even while life surges in the turbulent clutches of the rioting, all-governing master we call time, we may find comfort and warmth in the easy glow of a homeward night.

So what is a “home?” I suppose a home is neither a place nor a structure, although it very well may be. I suppose a home is the warm kernel of comfort we find when we are most seeking, and without which we may be forever lost on the undulating seas of the unforeseeable future. Home, then, can be anything—a friendly face, a lover’s arms, an unexpected and much-needed photograph of a long-forgotten past. I suppose home may ride on the surfaces of the world, visible and concrete and tangible; but I suppose home may also be buried deep beneath the otherwise unbroken film of our physical reality, bubbling up sometimes—a hug, a song, a bubble bath—to remind us that, yes, home exists, and, no, it will never be lost.

When the world gets big, we can always find home to steady us within it. After all, there’s no place like home.

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