Last night, as the sun began it’s decent into the horizon, my wife and I positioned ourselves around our fire pit as the air became cool and the dark began to fall.
All around us was the fragrant smell of nature – earth, mulch, freshly cut grass. A few late-night robins were out and about singing their tune and no doubt searching for a few morsels of food to fill their hunger.
As the flames danced before our eyes, we both became lost in a sense of peace and tranquility. The world seemed far away from us as we basked in the warmth of the fire and the enjoyment of each other’s company.
There are so few moments like that in life. Few opportunities to enjoy the here and now without worrying about the burdens this life forces upon us.
It was during this time in front of the fire that I was reminded of something I’d known for a while, and was glad to have reaffirmed.
Home is not a place filled with material possessions and a fancy car parked in the driveway. It’s a place where the people who make us feel most valued, most loved and most accepted live. That can be a tiny apartment in Northern New Jersey, or a modest log cabin in the mountains of Colorado.
Home is not a place – it’s a feeling. You can spend all your days (and lots of your money) trying to “create” that feeling with material possessions, but it’s fruitless at best.
When my wife and I first moved into our new home here in Colorado, we didn’t have much while we waited for our furnishings to arrive from New Jersey. But what we did have was each other.
It didn’t matter where we were or what we did and didn’t have. It still somehow felt like “home” to us – I guess because it was filled with the people who make us feel most valued, most loved and most accepted.
So many of us have preconceived notions of what is and is not important in life – based more on a need for acceptance in a complicated society than anything else.
I hope one day soon we can all get passed that need for social acceptance and understand that the people who love us don’t care what we drive, where we live or even how we look. What matters most is that feeling of “home” in their heart.
Sarah Dessen, author of What Happened to Goodbye writes, “Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
