It does not depend upon family. A person could move away from his or her family, start a new life, not have another family in the new place, and that new place could nevertheless still be HOME. It depends on how the person feels in the new place. I’m not sure what that feeling has to be, but this is a start… This is a great question, and I cannot wait to see what others come up with!

I think that home is where your family and friends are. I come from West Virginia, but my home is so far away. I think that where you can interact in a community with peers and people general get along pretty nicely with each other to make for a splendid place. Home is something that everyone must define for themselves because everyone comes from somewhere different.

Home, to me, is where I sleep and find a relative amount of security for my personal possessions. I’ve moved around in my life, and every place regardless of geographical location feels like home to me.

Maybe this is because I have never put that much thought into it, or maybe not.

Now, I must confess that not every place I’ve stayed and called home can be considered “Cozy”; however, I’m inclined to believe that coziness, while being fantastic, is not a prerequisite for home.

i believe home is a person. or even people. i think once you reach a comfort level with someone, be it a signifigant other, a sibling, a parent, or whomever, that becomes home. for a place to move from a house to a home a certain level of emotial attachment or comfort is reached making it home. and more than not that connection is due to a person. that’s what i think.

Home is where you feel safe and secure. this includes the house you live in, the school you go to or any place that invokes these feelings.

Home is the place where you feel protected and secure, and where you know that you “belong” without having to question it. When things are going horribly in your life, and you have that deep-down desire to just walk away from it all and hide for a while, home is usually the place you’re thinking of running to. There are some people who, due to tragedies and strife, have no sense of “home” at a given point in their lives. The lack of that refuge is a tragedy in and of itself, because the instinctive person inside of us all needs that safe place to hide and tend his wounds.

Home is the where your family and friends are. It is the place that you want to go back to after a hard day of school or work. It is a place where you can feel safe and loved. It can even be more than one place. Some people would argue that you can only have one home, but I disagree! You can have a home back in southern West Virginia, where your loving parents still live. You can have a home at Morgantown, where your friends are, You can have a home in Fairmont, where your loving sister lives. So home isn’t just one place, its wherever your heart is.

Home is the place that when you go there, the people there are happy to see you and you’re happy to see them. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with family. For some people, family does not make you feel safe or loved. Robert Frost said home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Maybe. But I’d argue it’s the place you want to be and where the people there want you to be there, too.

I’m not sure about this theory but I found it quite fascinating when I was thinking about the “Home” Question. I’m going to agree with everyone and say that home is a place where someone has some sort of emotional attachment and is able to take refuge in it from outside problems. Yet, I have also encountered a few people who have had very terrible experiences at home and wish to never be there again. To them, home is their CD player and a quiet room, or a collection of friends on a night out to town. The feeling of being home doesn’t manifest itself through a building in which they live but through memories kept in some alternate form. Every time they want to go “home” they actually just want that feeling of being accepted or comfortable and any way they can find that feeling is a form of “Home”.

For me “home” is the cocooning feeling of sanctity that I experience pulling into the hidden from view driveway of our house after work and being greeted by the eager tail wagging and unconditional affection of 3 labradors. A place to be completely myself, away from the frenetic, often crazy world!

The pool video reminded me of Adams House pool at Harvard, which seemed like home for a while, and did again last year at the reunion with some of the same people, even though the pool was closed.

Home can be a conference of like minds, in person or online.

Home is whereever my wife and I are, from Poland to New Zealand.

Home is the woods I grew up in and live in now.

This is what I give people around here (south Georgia, where everybody wants growth and few think about how that’s destroying forests and water and air quality) to get them to think about home beyond family, friends, and place, as community and ecology:

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (World As Home, The) by Janisse Ray

http://www.amazon.com/Ecology-Cracker-Childhood-World-Home/dp/1571312471

We will come to think of the world as home, so that we will continue to have one.

home is a place u frequently return to for safety and comfort, whether it be a building or person(s.

Home is somewhere you feel comfortable, can relax, without disturbance, and not be disturbed when you are doing important things.

Home, in my personal view, is where peace, happiness, and each breath, all have a balance

Soldiers say that home is where you hang your helmet. A fellow soldier in viet Nam who happened to be Lakota Souix told me that home is where you send your soul for safekeeping when you are in danger.

This is a question I am struggling with at the moment. This past year I have been helping my mother work to find a new home closer to where my husband, daughter and I live and sell our childhood home. “The farm” as we have always called it is in a quiet, precious little valley on a dirt road in southern Preston County. It has always served as my definition of home. It was what I thought of in long lonely nights thousands of miles away in Europe…or even just a 35 miles away in Morgantown as an undergrad. I’m still not sure how I am going to define “home” in the days after the sale of “the farm” is final.

Home is where you can ‘let your hair down’.

Home is a residential dwelling that provides a fundemental sense of security, comfortability, and reliability.

Home is that place whether it is physical or metaphysical that you are happy and content to just…be.

Home is where they call you by your nickname or sometimes by your full name.

“Home” I belive it to be a state of mind. A snece of comfort and freedom to be ones self, are major factors in what a person persives as a home. Security would be irrelevant, for a police officer can feel more at home on the streets than in their own house…

Home is a wonderful feeling. I feel it whenever I’m with my twin.

Goodness…home can be so many places. It’s where I grew up, I guess—which are only two places in my heart: Baltimore, MD (until I was 18) and Morgantown (until I was 27). The experiences, the people, the family in both locations, marked me as the individual I am today. And when I come “home” all those emotions come back to mind and heart.

Home is where your story begins.

I’ve read through a good portion of the responses to the stated question, and generally there seems to be the overall response that it is a place that envokes some kind of emotion within every individiual. While, for most it is a place that brings about love, wamrth, and cosiness, I don’t that those components necessarily define the idea of home. I also beleive that you must look at the connotation and denotation of “home.”

From the aspect of denotation, it is the physical place where you go about your business and rest on a day to day basis. You can sleep on a bench outside, eat at a restaurant, and use the bathroom at a public restroom—but you wouldn’t sleep on a bench every night if you had the option to sleep in a bed.

Connotatively, however, I would claim that home is any place where you find familiarity. We often say that one particular form of shelter is our home, because it is where we have built memories, but have you ever noticed that home isn’t necessarily just that building you’ve lived in for so many years? People claim countries, towns, cities to be their home. While we would like to define home as a place of sanctity and safeness, I’d have to say that it isn’t necessarily the case. Every city has crime, but nonetheless you would call that city your “home,” if you grew up there or built most of your life there in a period of time.

Anyway, that is my own personal opinion of home. It is either the actual physical location of a shelter, or a general area where you have personally lived for some period of time and have become familiar with. Thanks :]

Home is where you know the trees, the landscape, the sky at different times of the year. It’s watching the trees that you planted grow. It’s running in the park where your grandparents took their children. It’s walking the sidewalks that your folks walked. Home is being connected to your family’s past.

Home is a place where you feel safe. You know the people here love you and you love them just as much. Your home is somewhere that you’ve had good experiences as well as bad experiences. You consider a place your home when you have memories to associate with it.

In my humble opinion HOME is a sense of place established by experiences and/or perceptions that meld together to provide the “relationship” among the physical environment, connection with people, and an emotional state (usually of well being). Together these items create a framework from which everything revolved (past), revolves (present) or will revolve (future). In essence, HOME is the personal reference point (centroid) of an individual’s existence.

I just got home from work, and found an early Christmas gift from Santa waiting on the front porch of my HOME. The card read “I’m enjoying your website. -Santa”

(Isn’t it cool that Santa Claus is reading THE QUESTION!)

I ripped away the wrapping paper and found a brightly colored mug. The mug said, “Home is where my dogs are.” My dogs, Casper and Ella, wagged with approval. They barked, “Sometimes the truth is clear and simple!”

I’m skeptical about the theory, somewhat sympathetic toward their view on truth, but most of all, I’m very appreciative of the gift.

Thank you, Santa!

Simply stated: Home is where the heart is.

It doesn’t mean that it’s where your family is; it means that it’s the place(s) you feel the most comfortable. There could be only one, and there could be more. What matters is that they are the plces that you have your best times and your happiest memories.

Another interesting web site to consider is: This I Believe. The recent poster believes, “I believe that home is not a location but a commitment to the ones I love.”

Read the entire posting at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17640956

Happy New Year!

i think a home is somewhere where you feel loved and you have to support of your family and friends. home doesnt have to be with your parents it could be with your lover, or even a friend. any place you feel safe and loved would be considered home to me.

I believe “home” is the ultimate reference to comfort, when we experience the duality of enjoying ourselves and our company away from the public. This starts off as, and is taught to us to be, the family. Since we strive to maintain this, “home” may be most easily recognized when with family, but it isn’t necessary. I believe in the Brady Bunch movie, Mr. Brady says, “Home is where the heart is,” and I follow that quote as literally as possible. My apartment is home, but “home” can be achieved anywhere outside of it, if true comfort is felt.

Home is where YOU sense you BELONG.

“Home” is where you know you’re going before you there.

HOME is this foreign concept. JUST a concept.

It COULD be the place where I grew-up, but that place has changed. The house has been sold twice since I last lived there. Half of the neighbors have moved. Schools changed or moved altogether. The Post Office moved. A store changed names, and then became a pharmacy. It still looks the same on the map, but when I drive through there any more it just isn’t MY home- it’s now someone else’s.

It COULD be where I’m living now. I’ve moved 17 times in the last 8 years or so. 2 of those were to places in Afghanistan, so THAT wasn’t home. Three more were in South Korea, a very interesting and unique place, but that isn’t home. Texas a few times? Not home. Georgia? Not home. North Carolina? Not home.

And it COULD be where I WANT to be. But if I knew that for sure, then I wouldn’t be where I am now, trying to find the things and places that I WANT.

So home is a concept. Where is it? A physician might say it’s in my head. An astologist might say it’s in my stars. A philosopher might say it’s in my heart. And a theologist might say it’s in my soul.

I’ll let you know if I ever figure that out.

Home is a concept – yes. Having said that, that same concept is motivating us to search for it.

What really makes a place A HOME??? What is a home???

To me, bits and pieces of every comment pertain to the question. I do believe though that if your heart is content, peaceful, loving, trusting, happy and full of desire for life you can make any place ?a home?. I guess many of us are in search of that place. James S., I hope you find the home you are searching for.

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.

– Christian Morgenstern (German author and poet)

memories and materials…..home….
the meaning of home varies from one individual to another…..dont you think so?
if not why would everyone’s comments be different
=)
just say the word “home”
memories and materials just cant stop flooding one’s mind to remind them…of that …..one particular moment or space in their life….or maybe even more than 1
=)

What is ‘home” and what is “the place we live in”?I think there is a difference between this 2 notions. when i hear the word “home” in my mind comes the image of my childhood, my parents, my friends and our games played together. “home” is my village with green forests, and sweet water, with fresh clean air and blue sky.in other words “home” is the place where i was born and grew up. now I live other place. Its the same nature, the same sky, the same sun but the feeling is other.I feel comfortable at this place but “home” i feel at my ease. by “home” we are strong attached. Its a special feeling. It seems that, that ground and that water is special. And we cant take it with us. We only can keep this “special world” in our mind and our soul. My “home” is very attractive. I have a big garden with all kind of sweet fruits and vegetables. I have a small lake in the middle of my garden where i can do fishing, and swiming, and “home” i have a mother who is allways waiting for me with a missing heart, open arms, warm smile and kind soul.she is a unic person in this world whom I love the most in this life. My mother is my home. And my home is my house with her living in it. Nothing in this world compares with “home”