I come from a very picturesque hometown which has fallen on hard times of late. Here's a picture of the town in its autumnal glory:
The idea of home has always been a complicated mix of ideas and emotions. Is it a physical structure? a location? or even an emotion? Can you find yourself more at home at a place where you only just arrived than in a place where you spent the best part of your life? Can you live your life in a place and never consider it home? Can you have more than one home?
There really isn't a single definitive answer to what constitutes "home". It seems to be defined by the individual and is contextually dependent. There are stories, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes to mind, where home and all the sentiment that comes with it is located in a slum. So clearly there's a lot that goes into the term "home" - so let's see what some writers and thinkers have to offer:
“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night
“Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices
“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
― Thomas Wolfe
“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.”
― Dennis Lehane
Following up on Lehane's idea of home as a something that is created, formed, rather than established, here's a clip from the cut TV show Firefly. I offer this as an example of people creating their own sense of home - even on a spaceship in the dark, hostile emptiness of space, for two reasons: One, it is a really good example. Two: I liked Firefly and don't mind seeing a clip every so often - maybe it simply reminds me of my own home in some way.
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