Home(less)?

2/19/2012

4 Comments

 
" You know that point in your life whenyou realize the house you grew up in...isn't really your home anymore.All of a sudden, even though you havesome place where you put your shit...that idea of home is gone.I still feel at homein my house.You'll see one day when you move out.Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone.You feel like youcan never get it back.It's like you feel homesickfor a place that doesn't even exist.Maybe it's likethis rite of passage, you know?You won't ever have that feeling again untilyou create a new idea of home for yourself.You know, for... For your kids.For the family you start.It's like a cycleor something.I don't know. But I missthe idea of it, you know?Maybe that's allfamily really is.A group of people that missthe same imaginary place.Maybe."

That quote from Garden State got me thinking. We are all at different points in our lives. Some of us are still living at home (no shame in that at all) and others now have "a place they can call their own" - whatever that means. For most of us, up until we were 18 we had a pretty good idea of what home was. Home was the place where Mom and/or Dad and/or siblings were. The place where you had your own room (or maybe you shared it) where you could put your own things. The place where you had dinner almost every night. It gave you a sense of security and belonging. 

But then we went off to college and we made a temporary new home. We lodged in dormitories and off-campus housing, but we still told friends that we were going "back home" for breaks. And now we are living in the "real world" and are tasked with making a new home for ourselves. I can't speak for y'all, but I can say that the house in New York that I grew up in for 17 years doesn't feel like home to me anymore. It feels like a place that has lots of memories and a place where I can put my personal belongings, but it doesn't feel like my home. 
Now I live with five other people in a house that has been lived in since the 1950's. All of us will be out of the house in less than two years. But home is more than a house. A home is a place where you feel welcomed and safe, where you feel like you belong. I was having a conversation with the renowned philosopher Laura Lindsley about this. I said to her that every state you live in leaves an indelible mark on you, much like every friend you have. She replied that while that may be true, there is that one friend who impacts you more than others. So is the one state/house/physical place that impacts you the most your home?

Discuss.



-Conor
4 Comments
Emily
2/20/2012 12:04:05 pm

Loved this post! But who wrote it??

In any case, I know what you mean! Coming home from break during college I sometimes felt like my room was just an empty shell...all the familiar impedimentia of "my room" had been scattered between ND and home, and it wasn't quite the same place as before.

Related story: when I first moved to Florida back in the summer, I would be really, really disoriented when I woke up every morning. You know that feeling where you wake up and can't remember where you are? Well it was like that, only I would go through a whole list of places before I remembered where I was: was I in the pink room I grew up in, back at home? No...well was it my dorm room at Notre Dame, with the basilica bells ringing me awake? No...sadly not that either. The yellow flat in Dublin with the sounds of the city just out my window? Nope! It was a brand new place, and I was still in the process of making it feel like home.

I needed some new happy memories, some Jane Austen and some Pascal and other books about me, some rainy nights with a cup of tea, then I began to know where I was, and to feel at home in a new home again. :)

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Joey
2/21/2012 06:38:16 am

I loved this post too, although it looks like it got cut off in the middle. Conor, was it you?

But yeah, I totally know what you mean. I love the quote from Garden State, although I don't even remember it from the movie. Guess I missed that part...probably couldn't hear it, haha. I remember being hit with that same feeling of homelessness, or rather that my family house was no longer my home, shortly after I moved to D.C. I actually wrote about this in response to Conor's (your?) post from September "On Pretending to Be Grown Up": "As for me, I think I am just starting to feel entirely "grown up" right now. This feeling coincides with finally leaving my parents' home for what (I hope) will be the last time. And so this relates to my "Place" pensee - this leaving home and moving into a new place, representing a new adult life, is actually what inspired me to write that post. It has just started to settle in that now I am fully on my own, fully in control of my own life in every area. This is both an exhilarating and terrifying thought."

I think the idea of a family being a group of people who miss the same imaginary place is very powerful. Or you could say it's a group of people who have a longing for the same (possibly imaginary) ideal, for the same kind of life. In that sense, PLS was our family at Notre Dame, and to some extent (for some of us), it still continues to be. But we're also all now in the long, drawn-out process of carving out new families -- perhaps our final families. We're trying to find people with the same ideals, people who miss the same imaginary place, with whom we can live in a sustainable community. And this process -- a process that is often protracted, difficult and crucially important -- is causing similar angst for many of us, I expect.

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Adam
2/25/2012 12:42:41 am

I guess it hasn’t really hit me yet that my original home is no longer my real ‘home’. When I visit, it still feels about the same to me. My parents are thinking about moving, so when that happens, maybe it will finally hit me.

I liked how Joey used the word ‘angst’. This post got me thinking about the same concept. I’m taking a course on Soren Kierkegaard this semester, and we just finished reading ‘The Concept of Anxiety’. In this work, Kierkegaard talking about the “dizziness of freedom” that we experience in the plethora of choices we have at any given moment. The choices we make right now not only determine the choices we will be able to make in the future, but also close off other avenues of choices that will no longer be open to us. This why we have anxiety; anxiety is the presupposition of freedom. I think this is especially true at our age, when we really are in the process of making choices that will shape the rest of our lives. He also talks about how anxiety preceded original sin, but that’s another topic for discussion…

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Lillian
3/6/2012 04:51:49 am

This resonates with me differently because of my family's size. My parents' house is very much that place of memories that Conor describes, for me and the other siblings scattered far around the world. But it is not an "imaginary" place at all, because my youngest siblings are just beginning their own growing-up there. I guess I'd say that my apartment is home for me now, as Notre Dame was home for 4 years, but my parents' house is still "meta-home" and will continue to feel that way as long as younger Civantoses are spinning out their loud, colorful lives there. Is it a contradiction to have multiple homes? And yet, I do. And when I shape my own family home someday, it's as an extension and not as a replacement. Or so I feel.

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