What does “home” mean to you?
For some, it’s where you’re born. For others, it’s where you currently live or grew up. In either case, home is usually referred to in the physical sense. My question is this: Does it benefit us more having “home” as a physical address or an address of the soul, something more internal?
I was in a restaurant a few weeks ago and a woman told her son, “Remember, no matter where you go off to college, stay true. If you stay true, it doesn’t matter where you live; you’re always home where you feel loved.”
As soon as she finished, I immediately resonated with what she said, waiting to make eye contact so I could give her one of those head nods like, “Preach!” or at least one of those across-the-room air high-fives or something. Although she never looked my way, the insight she gave to her son is still worth reflecting over.
Staying true, being your most authentic self, these are phrases that should become common during your journey of a billion seconds. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking of home as where our food or bed is and leaving it at that. Some call the most chaotic situations home or, even worse, they share this so-called home with others who don’t care about their well-being.
So before we call anything home, we should develop an acute sense of love by staying true to who we are and, once that energy is felt in return, we’re home. Instead of a physical address, this ideology looks at home from an internal standpoint.
It wasn’t that long ago when I actually adopted this philosophy. About four years ago, I decided to rent my townhouse out and sleep on other people’s couches for almost two years. I personally believe everyone should couch-surf for at least three to six months. It’s truly amazing how, once you conquer the necessary, you never feel as though you’re lacking anything, which in turn reverses the idea of “nothing” into “everything.”
The Earth becomes your home, which means you end up having many homes. Before you may have wanted a Tempur-Pedic mattress, but now, you find euphoria on any bed, any couch. Wine is poured in red cups and tastes just as sweet as wine in crystal glasses. And when there are no cups, we share the bottle, smiling at this understood secret about life. About the value of time, the value in people, in love, in drinking water from our palms.
Here’s the Words In Grey exercise for the month. The idea is to place yourself into a context you may not often find yourself in.
– If your home was no longer a physical address – let’s say it was a musical instrument instead – what kind of instrument would it be? Why?
– Do you like the music coming from this instrument?
– Whether your answer to No. 2 was yes or no, you have five minutes to write a poem from the perspective of that musical instrument, aka, your home.
If the answer to No. 2 was no, explore that no a little bit. Why is the music so terrible? What would make for better music? If you are able to come up with changes that could make your home – that musical instrument – better, write a new poem from that perspective.
Writing from these perspectives allows us to gain a truly unique sense of ourselves and what we see as our current “home.”
Genesis the Greykid was born in Chattanooga, raised in many cities (military brat), but currently splits part of his time between New York, the Washington, D.C., area and Tennessee. He’s been writing poetry and music for a living since 2011 and recently released a book of poetry with creative exercises titled, “Words In Grey.” Contact him at info@WordsinGrey.com.