Home Sweet Home!

They say home is where the heart is but what does that mean? Is it true, at least for most of us? Is it the bricks and sticks that give us this fondness, or is it something else. I love being home, and even more, than being at home, I love coming back home when I am away for an extended period of time.

This familiar saying is what Dorothy, in the film The Wizard of Oz, says at the end of the movie. Dorothy has defeated the Wicked Witch of the West and revealed the true nature of Oz, and now she’s ready to go back to Kansas. The blog title is another famous expression of our affection for the place we reside in. This phrase is a quotation from the song “Home, Sweet Home” (1823), words by John Howard Payne and music by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, from the opera Clari. It says ”Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

Wikipedia describes A home, or domicile is a living space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for an individual, family, household, or several families in a tribe. It is often a house, apartment, or other building, or alternatively a mobile home, houseboat, yurt, or any other portable shelter. Beyond just serving as a shelter, I suggest that our homes have emotional and psychological impact on our lives, mostly good, but not always. Susan Clayton, an environmental psychologist at the College of Wooster, says that for many people, their home is part of their self-definition, which is why we do things like decorate our houses and take care of our lawns. It really becomes an expression of who we are as individuals. In an article by U.S.News, Why Our Homes Make us Happy, Graham Rowles a gerontology professor at the University of Kentucky says there is pretty strong evidence that the environment in which people live is closely linked to their well-being “It’s sort of like the human-animal attachment to territory is built into our DNA” referring not only to our address but even our township or state (God Bless Texas).

I think I may have opened up something that volumes could be written about, even scripture has something to say in Psalm 16:6 “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.”

I will ask you to comment below, what is it that you love about home?  For me, it’s not the appeal of the exterior, or the rooms inside, or the land surrounding our property although all nice. If you look closely at my home picture you will see some clues as to why I love home.  The school signs in the front yard that represent our kids, our silly dog Remi who is just one of the animals that bring us joy, the freshly stained bench, and flower beds that the wife and  I worked on this past weekend.  It is the people who I share my house with that make it Home Sweet Home.