Hands Painted Like the WorldFor me, the past is not home. It was a place that led me to where I am today, but it's not home. My home is in the here and now. In the walls that make up my house. In the laughter of my kids, in the smell of coffee made by hubby, in the wagging tails of my two dogs. It surrounds me in the friends that make me smile, in the bed where I lay, in the garden where I grow. It fills me with love, hope, and laughter. It grounds me when I am too excited, too sad, or too stressed. My home is where I can kick off my high heels, slip my feet into a pair of floppy, pink slippers, and be myself.
Others may argue that home IS where they come from - especially if their parents still reside in the house where they grew up. That symbol of home may strike the flame that warms the heart when thinking of home. I have come to learn that home is as personal a place as the shelves of our hearts where we store the memories that made us who we are. The microbial biologist argued that the community of bacteria and creatures that live in our gut - have a right to be there. They WANT to be there. It is there home. We live in a symbiotic relationship with them - even though we can't see it. The work they do for us is often ignored - but they are living creatures - without whom our bodies would not be in good working order. So maybe home is where everyone or everything is kept in balance. Instead of a location, it is an existence. An existence of having symbiotic relationships with those that think of you, when they think of home.
Try acting as if your entire community were your home. Treating everyone within it with respect and appreciation! Because if we all thought of home as broader-reaching and made meaningful by connections as opposed to thinking more of the walls of our physical home, we could potentially make the world a much warmer place.
I can't believe it but...TEDxWaterloo was a thrilling experience!
Happy home-making,
Kathy Pettit :)
