What Home Is

From Alain De Botton's "The architecture of happiness" (page 123 as it happens) -

Home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to. As we write so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us

There's this german word that's hard to translate: Heimat. If it's negatively loaded for some, it needs to be rescued. Arte (the genius cultural TV channel) writes: "Soldiers fall for their nation and become heroes. But "Heimat" has no uniform or flag. It is 'the country' we hold inside". Now, to illustrate by extension, an Austrian friend explained how "heimat"  for a horse would be drinking water and eating grass. The natural thing to do or "place" to be. Home.

Every immigrant, foreigner or long-time traveller has wondered about "Home". Is it where I landed or where I'm from ? The place where I'll go back ? Impossible-rs, let's forget for a moment about going back. That myth of the eternal return. And let me throw some Nietzsche at you:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; (...)The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

Home is not a country. Or a family. Or friends. Home is you. There's not going back anywhere. You're already there. Get comfortable :)