For me, there are few places on earth that can rival being home. Sure, there are places to visit with rugged, majestic mountains and cities teaming with rich, cultural history. I get it…places to go and people to see…all with the power to positively take our breath away. And before my life is over, I’m planning on seeing every single one of them. Yet when the visit is over, the bottom line is that for me, there is simply no place like home. Maybe it’s because I travel a lot with my business but the truth is, I just love being home. And when I’m not here, I get a bit homesick. I can’t tell you how many times after a long day of travel I long to just sit in my own kitchen with a grilled cheese sandwich rather than go to some fancy restaurant. That’s because home is one place on earth, I know I belong, where comfort is a given, and my heart seems to beat in sync to the energy of its surroundings.
I felt this very feeling this morning as I got up and padded out to the kitchen to put my tea kettle on. As I stood in the middle of my kitchen at 5:30 AM waiting for the kettle to boil I looked around my kitchen. With my pajama pants dragging on the tile floors, I stepped on a few crumbs my hubby dropped the night before as he’d made his favorite bedtime snack, toast! Glancing into the tv room things were a bit disheveled but not bad. My point is that my place was not perfectly clean but it wasn’t out of control either. Regardless of all its little imperfections, as I looked around, it was perfect for me. I thought to myself, “I never want to leave”
As I stood there in my kitchen, I thought about the concept of home and I began to wonder, is home a place or a state of mind? As someone who was raised moving a lot, I never put down roots as a child and that trend repeated itself into adulthood. But home as a child was where ever my parents were. It was a safe haven from life’s storms and a place where I knew I was loved. When I married and raised my own family, we moved many times and I tried to always instill that same energy with them. As a result, everyone always adapted and we saw each move as an adventure. I find it interesting that we moved to Florida after our last child left for college, yet when our kids talk about “coming home” they are coming here, to Florida, a place they’ve never lived. I decided that yes, for our family, home is a state of mind.
Whether your family has lived under the same roof for generations or if you have never stayed put for more than a year, I’ll bet if you search within yourself deep enough, you too will see that home is not, in fact, a physical location but rather a feeling, an attitude and a sense of belonging that is instead deep within our heart and soul. Once you find that place in your heart, you can tap into that state of mind and feel that sense of love and the security of home no matter where our journey takes you. Try it. And the next time you’re homesick and longing for familiar surroundings take a deep breath, close your eyes, and transport your mind back to that place that can only be described as pure comfort. Visualize it. Feel it. Smell it. And most of all enjoy it. Once you master this trick, you’ll never be homesick again. Because bottom line, there is no place like home.
