If we know the meaning of home, we would live in happier places. What is home, and makes a house a home, after all? It can’t be the lifeless buildings. does home mean spiritually? We will attempt to answer some of these questions in this post.

We will start with the thought which is at the heart of this post.

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you- Christian Morgenstern

This quote is beautiful, and I have reminded myself of this quotes several times in my life. Home is where they understand you.

Now, all of us are given a family, when we are born. There are parents, and in many cases, there are siblings too. Is that home?

Now, it depends.

When we are kids, we don’t quite understand what we need to be happy. We don’t even know what love is. We don’t know why we are sad, and why we are happy.

However, as we grow into mature human beings with beliefs and values of our own, sometimes, our views begin to diverge from those of our family, and people we grew up with. They also tend to diverge from people who raised us, our parents.

Now, family is family, no matter what. However, if your family doesn’t understand you and why you do, what you do, you do need a new home. If the home doesn’t make us happy, then we haven’t arrived at the right meaning of home.

Let us delve a little further.

What does it mean to understand someone?

To understand someone means to understand their motivations. The true test of understanding someone is if you truly understand their motivations. People are their motivations and motivations can be understood by asking the question-why.

If you want to understand someone you care about, ask them why they do what they do. That would help you in understanding their intrinsic motivations. Once you understand their intrinsic motivations, you would be able to get to the core of their personality.

Life is difficult because a lot of people, especially the ones who take a non-conformist approach to life, find that nobody really understands them. Nobody gets why they do what they do and why it is important to them.

Hence, there is loneliness in a world full of people. At the time of writing this, the world has over 7.5 billion people, and still there is widespread loneliness in the world, because people don’t care to understand each other.

Relationships fail or don’t even develop because people don’t understand each other. Love is at the heart of relationships, and understanding is one of the core tenets of love. Somewhere in love, lies the meaning of home.

Now, let’s talk about the second step of love- acceptance.

What does it mean to accept someone?

To accept someone means not wanting to change them significantly, and allowing them to flourish as themselves.

Now, acceptance is even more difficult than understanding. You may understand why someone behaves the way they do, but their behaviour is so odd, dysfunctional or painful to you, that in spite of wanting to accept them, you can’t get yourself to do it.

You try to change yourself if you care enough to be able to adapt to their way of life, but this only creates unhappiness in your heart because you can’t change yourself beyond a point. We can only change small things about our lives, but like I mentioned above, we can’t change the things that matter most to us.

Similarly, they can’t either.

Since two people can’t change their fundamentals and can’t get themselves to accept the other person as who they are, in spite of having the intention to do it, there is no way such relationships can last. It is quite a difficult thing to figure out what we can, or cannot change about ourselves. If you were to ask yourself, you wouldn’t be able to say so quite easily.

Let us take an example.

How important is getting up early in the morning for you?

If it is quite important to you, you would not be able to happily co-exist with a person who doesn’t let you sleep on time, so that you can rise peacefully in the morning. If you don’t get up peacefully in the morning, then it would disturb your entire day, and you would not be happy. As a consequence, you would not be able to accept their behaviour of being a night owl, and you would not be able to change yourself either.

However, it you don’t hold your life to getting up in the morning, and are okay with rising late, you would sacrifice this part of your life for the sake of the relationship, and be able to accept the other person for who they are.

So, acceptance is the real reason why relationships work or fail. Obviously, there can’t be any acceptance without understanding, and so that is a given.

How do we find the meaning of home?

Now, we need a home-someone who understands and accepts us or life gets quite lonely. None of us wants to live a lonely life.

Therefore, if you don’t have a home, that is, nobody understands and accepts you at your place, then you need to find a home. You need a find a few people and make them friends, or partners, or whatever. Just find those people and build your fucking tribe. Your tribe would help you find meaning. Your tribe is also, for you, the meaning of home.

You need to define the kind of people who mean home to you

but you need to find those people. Thankfully, they are somewhere there. If you are a conformist, it won’t be difficult. Most people in the world are conformists, and I don’t think they would even be reading stuff like this.

However, if you are a non-conformist, and you have views which are different from the large sections of society, you would struggle to find your kind of company. It would take you more effort than a conformist to define the meaning of home and then go about finding it.

Thankfully, may be 1 to 2% of the world does think like you. There are people on the fringes all the time trying to fight for their dreams. There are people who cannot bear a shallow materialistic society. There are people who think for themselves and do not follow the majority thought like a herd of sheep.

You need to find those people and spend time with them. You need to share with them how you feel, and may be then, they would also tell you how they feel, and then your world wouldn’t be so deserted.

None of us deserves to be lonely. Just because we find that we are different than the rest of the pack, doesn’t mean that we need to walk a lonely road. We don’t have to.

Till you don’t find a home, be your own home

I highly encourage you as someone who has spent a considerable part of his life by himself to learn to enjoy your own company.

No, I didn’t really choose to be by myself all the time. But, I realized sometime back that I am a bit different, and don’t enjoy a lot of things that most people do. My idea of travel, of life, of happiness is different than that of most of the society.

Hence, I found myself quite lonely at different points of my life. Thankfully, there are people I know now, who are like me, even if they are not close friends.

So, I would recommend you to you to enjoy your own company. Be your own home, when there is no home. That ways you would learn to understand and accept yourself first.

It is an important step in the journey of your happiness to learn about ourselves, things we value, things we can, and can’t change about ourselves, for the sake of love.

Mind you, none of us wants to be lonely. If anyone says they are happy being by themselves, what they are essentially saying is that they haven’t found the kind of people they like as company. Nobody wants to be lonely.

However, it is better to be in your own company than in the company of people you don’t value or respect. That ways, you are degrading your emotions and your life. They are not home. They are strangers.

Till you find a home, be your own home.

In conclusion, let us ask again, what is home?

Home is people who understand and accept you. They understand why you do what you do, and they allow you to do that. They don’t want to change the essence of who you are as a person, and they love you for who you are, since understanding and acceptance, is the true definition of love.

Thank you for reading.

The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani