Philosophy of HOME

HOME

One of the most meaningful activities we are ever engaged in is the creation of a home.  Over a number of years, typically with a lot of thought and considerable dedications, we assemble furniture, crockery, pictures, rugs, cushions, vases, sideboards, taps, door handles and so on into a distinctive constellation that we anoint with the word ‘home’.  As we create our rooms, we engage passionately with culture in a way we seldom do in the supposedly higher realms of museums or galleries.  We reflect profoundly on the atmosphere of a picture; we ponder the relationship between colours on a wall; we notice how consequential the angle of the back of a sofa can be, and ask carefully what books truly deserve our ongoing attention.

Our homes will not necessarily be the most attractive or sumptuous environments we could spend time in. There are always hotels or public spaces that would be a good deal more impressive.  But after we have been travelling a long while, after too many nights in hotel rooms or in the spare rooms of friends, we typically feel a powerful ache to return to our own furnishings – an ache that has little to do with material comfort per se.  We need to get home to remember who we are.

Creating a home is frequently such a demanding process because it requires us to find our way to objects that correctly convey our identities.  We may have to go to enormous efforts to track down what we deem to be the ‘right’ objects for particular functions, rejecting hundreds of alternatives that would, in a material sense, have been perfectly serviceable, in the name of those we believe can faithfully communicate the right messages about who we are.

We get fussy because objects are, in their own ways, hugely eloquent.  Two chairs that perform much the same physical role can articulate entirely different visions of life.  An object feels ‘right’ when it speaks attractively about qualities that we are drawn to, but don’t posses strong enough doses of in our day-to-day lives.  The desirable object gives us a more secure hold on values that are present yet fragile in ourselves; it endorses and encourages important themes in us.  The smallest things in our homes whisper to us; they offer us encouragement, reminders, consoling thoughts, warnings or correctives, as we make breakfast or do the accounts in the evening.

The quest to build a home is connected with a need to stabilise and organise our complex selves.  It’s not enough to know who we are in our own minds.  We need something more tangible, material and sensuous to pin down the diverse and intermittent aspects of our identities.  We need to rely on certain kinds of cutlery, bookshelves, laundry cupboards and armchairs to align us with who we are and seek to be.  We are not vaunting ourselves; we’re trying to gather our identities in one receptacle, preserving ourselves from erosion and dispersal.  Home means the place where our soul feels that it has found its proper physical container, where, every day, the objects we live among quietly remind us of our most authentic commitments and loves.