Whatever and wherever home is, it's one of the most reliably positive places in our world. It's a place where you can be open and vulnerable, because you know you won't be judged. It's a place where you can be yourself, know that that person is cared for and loved, and not try to put on a front. It's also a place from which you can reliably derive happiness. Home meets many of our basic physical and emotional needs as humans, so it's no surprise that we tend to gravitate towards our version of home, but how do we determine what home means to us?
image by viahouse.com
The Role of Home / Leaving Home
I believe that to understand home, we have to contemplate home with its opposite (being uncomfortable, being away from home); because we take our homes for granted, our views of what a home does may under-represent what functions it actually does provide. Looking at the presence of home and the absence of home is meant to counteract this biases.
1. You must anticipate a safe return to voluntarily leave.
In order to voluntarily leave home, we have to anticipate being able to return in the future. Let's examine this for a moment. There is something that is biologically hard-wired into humans about having a home - we as a society often value fitting in over standing out. Why is this? Going back to our hominid days, it would have been more advantageous to survive if you were in a part of a tightly-knit group who defend the other members in the pack, making the overall group much stronger. This makes it very advantageous to be in a tightly-knit group, which explains the huge incentive to make friends in the modern world. When we decide to leave home, we have the perception that something else is better (perhaps another home), or that when leaving home we will be able to return, thus keeping the benefits of that home. These interactions of temporarily leaving groups and joining others is too complex to discuss here, but the point is that leaving home must:
1. Have high perceived value
2. Allow for a safe return
In addition, we could apply these concepts of leaving and returning home to music. First of all, we would consider the home to be the key that the music is in. Whenever we start the piece in a certain key, we expect to return to that key at the end of the piece, maybe even by the end of the phrase. These expectations are also associated with emotions; wherever there is dissonance, we feel tension and anxiety, and whenever there is consonance, we feel emotional release and catharsis. However if these expectations are not eventually met, we are deeply dissatisfied because of the emotions that go with these expectations; this could be the reason that people dislike atonal music (music without a particular underlying key), because there is nowhere to return to. This role of "home" within music also reveals a particular function of home that is often forgotten: it provides structure among the chaos of everyday goings-on. The structure of tension and release is usually reasonably predictable (4 or 8 bar phrases), and allow humans to understand and make peace with the chaotic world (represented by the piece).
image by Susukifarag
To reiterate, without safety at home, we will not feel compelled to venture out. This means more reclusive behavior, and less willingness to try unfamiliar and unknown activities. However, when you do have a safe, reliable home, those activities become much more fulfilling. Except for maybe your biological home, which has likely always been your home since birth, we at some point were an outsider at all places we consider home. This makes branching out and finding new opportunities for home extremely important.
Finding Home
Many people consider their true homes to be wherever their favorite people are; so a similar approach to finding a home could be used.
1. Observe potential groups from the outside
1. This is similar to the approach I discussed in week 1 with making friends. Try to observe a group from the outside and look at how they treat each other? Are there one or two beneficiaries with every one else following the motions or is everyone benefiting? This could help you understand your role should you try to make that your new home.2. Nostalgia
Think of your most nostalgic moments. Nostalgic moments have a sense of home and familiarity to them and are distinctly positive (never negative); it is a way of making sense of our past and using it to predict what might work in the future. It also makes returning home much sweeter; you remember all the good aspects of home, want to remember and reflect on the past, and thus learn what places functioned most easily as home and what was so special about those places. For these reasons, nostalgia seems to be a very good way to remember where your home is and what you value most.Conclusion
"Home is where the heart is" - it's cliché, but true. It's a way for us to make sense of the world, understand what environments are conducive for our emotional and physical well-being, and be as happy as possible. Nostalgia helps us to understand the keys to our emotional and physical well-being, and reminds us to be happy. These feelings are especially strengthened after a long period away from home. Home grounds us in what is distinctly human: interpersonal relationships, caring for one another, and enabling the happiness of others. No other species does this in quite the same way as humans, so cherish this; it allows our society to function properly.
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