8. March. I wonder if a home is much more than a house and a place… Things like a relationship, a feeling, a time, a trail… and a story. A story we follow in all we do, both day and night.

Thoughts on what “Home” is

Text and drawing by Frits Ahlefeldt. FritsAhlefeldt.com

“Home” is one of the most timeless concepts we wrap our reality around through all time and cultures. For most of us we connect this concept to a special location in our reality. Something that can be described in GPS coordinates and our phones and self-driving cars understand too – “Take me home” is an universal concept, but it can mean so much else than just GPS coordinate defined place

Home as relationship

Kin and family is closely connected to being home. It is where our tribe lives and thrives. Being turned away or having to leave home of some reason is what starts many stories.

Home as feeling

In psychology home is used a lot, feeling homeless, feeling lost, ones home in ruins, coming home, feeling like a foreigner, coming home to oneself… is all about feelings that is closely connected and explained by the home concept

Home as house

Our homes is maybe one of the most saying things about us. How we live, how we decorate and design the space we call home can tell a lot about who we are. From what we care about, to how many resources we have and to what style of life and understandings we dwell in.

Home as Technology

Maybe it is all new, that we can describe homes as places defined in digital ways, home on Facebook, on Instagram… in the cloud or the home of ones avatar. You can live both here and simultaneously be a princess living on a castle in a digital world

Home as time

Can home be seen as a certain period? – Some are said to live in the past, even the stone-age. Others live in the future… And we are all told we should try to dwell more ( or less) in the moment. Somehow the concept of home and dwelling is also connected to time

Home as trail

Nomads still have homes, places they dwell, but I wonder if these places are far closer related to the surrounding landscapes, as “the home as place” is balanced by the “home as trail” concept. The difference I think might be that looking at the home as a trail is closely related to storytelling

Home as a story

“We live in stories like fish in water” – stories are maybe our real homes. We dwell in a certain identity, a certain story about who we are that tends to define how we relate, both to time, people and places around us.

Home – day and night

Every day we build and continue along our lives along these storylines, like if they were trails – Trails and stories we in strange ways follows both in day-light and maybe even at night in our dreams

I wonder if we in our understandings of reality are closer to waking along trails than to living in places?

I think maybe the connection is that we stop and dwell in places, but we move and live along ever changing trails.