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A state of being

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By: Catchsketch

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

What is home? The soil colours, the vernacular currents, the domestic conversations, the middle class longings? Or perhaps it’s the picket fences covering lush neatly mowed lawns in front of wooden A-frame houses. Ultimately, in my mind at least, home is where a sense of belonging resides - an affinity and kinship to a perceived safe-space. However different our walks of life — what contrast there is between an English aristocrat’s mansion and an Indian tea-sellers shack, between the babushka’s kitchen and a welder’s workshop — we are united by our deep desire for a literal or figurative place to call home.

For some, home is woven from the raw fibres of history and culture. But these notions of belonging are, when it’s all said and done, ideational constructs that only blossom in significance when meaning is attributed to them against the backdrop of time. They cease to exist without a story or the vivid collage of folklore, myth and tradition.

In the lattice of existence, home, for me, is neither a destination nor identity. It is simply where I can feel and hear the beauteous melody of my soul sing. It is where I can connect with loved ones with a depth and sincerity that transcends corporeal boundaries. It is where a certain ray of hope and perpetuity leaps into the air. It is where my innermost fragilities are cradled and nursed back to strength.

Home is then a process - one of excavation and self-discovery, to reignite the embers of our lost humanity. These aren’t grandiose breakthroughs but humble moments of awareness that take refuge in ones’ consciousness. Self-discovery is the delight in observing a snail’s unbridled resilience in traversing the abyssal crack in the sidewalk for the sake of pasturing on a single blade of grass. The little things. The joy in these micro-moments comes from the unexpected grace of allowing such an unremarkable event to fill the soul with such remarkable delight. Because the truth is always hidden in the inexhaustible wisdom of the ordinary.

I’m most at home when I’m able to live with a sense of fulfilment as opposed to romping through life perpetually dissatisfied. The morbid pursuit for validation and material success - as part of the modern-day cult of busyness and productivity - recedes to the background, assuming a refreshing irrelevance. Here, I’m at peace with unburdened contemplation, in absolute presence with the universe within my mind, ready to meet it on its own terms.

It is at home where I’m the only custodian of my own integrity - the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who I am and what I stand for vanish in the blink of an eye. The static of self-righteousness is obliterated because all that matters is the existential connection I share with fellow beings, beyond the superficial veneer of social protocols or niceties. There is no mélange of half-truths and agendas, just pure love.

Home is the greatness of soul; an impregnable shield and a sort of ultimate immunity. No picket fences required.