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Friday, April 23, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 34 - Home Sweet Home

Wow alright time is flying by so fast! With AP tests coming up and a whole bunch of other stuff in my schedule it's gonna be hard to keep up this blog for the next couple weeks but I'll try to make another post when I have free time!

So this entry comes from a request by La Mealy on my facebook page. If you guys have a good idea for future posts just message me, comment or whatever and I'll do my best to answer it! I have set up an email account at philosophyblog.1@gmail.com which is specific to the blog but if you want to message me on facebook it might be better depending on the situation. Anyways, he wanted me to talk about how "home is where you make it." I feel like this topic also goes along with how home is also WHAT you make it. You will most likely have a physical home if you are reading this but not everyone has the privilege of a dedicated shelter to house them from the harsh conditions of the outside world. For the rest of us we are very fortunate to have a place where we can claim as our own. This place is like a safe haven for us. We can be pretty confident that when we need it, our house will be there for us to take refuge and recuperate from the harsh realities of the world. We usually wake up every day from it and can call it a day and fall asleep in it spending a good chuck of a day in it.

Besides the obvious parts of a home, the philosophical concept and importance of a home is that is a safe haven that provides comfort for its inhabitants. Regardless of the events that took place during the day, you should be able to fall back to your house and feel safe in it. You can always resort to it usually regardless of what comes up. It represents a place you can turn to especially in your time of need. One point I want to make is that home doesn't necessarily need to be a certain house but it can be a location. Referring to real estate's number one rule, the most important part of a home is "Location, Location, Location." Getting to the La's point about how home is where you make it, a location that you spend a lot of time can also represent your home regardless of if it is your actual home or not. People associate with their hometowns all the time. Whether it is representing your hood or wanting to be associated with a nice area, plenty of people call a certain area home and rightly so because they usually spend a majority of their time there. You might want to represent an area because of all the opportunities it afforded you and you might feel it is necessary to give back to the community who helped raise you. Others might try it to get the notoriety of an already established community. For instance, you would want to show off that you live in a rich neighborhood to be associated with the wealthy. I believe regardless of your current predicament, everybody wants to promote improvement for their area and by showing it in a positive light you can do so. If you have such a great place, many people will want to visit the attractions and therefore put more money in the local economy to further improve that area.

These hometowns usually hold a lot of memories for those who are a part of them. Your everyday living experiences almost always take place in these areas unless you are traveling to other locations. Because of technology like the internet, it has allowed us to do more while in the comforts of our own town so travel isn't as crucial as it once was. This allows residents to experience more of what their own place has to offer. The experiences you have has a direct relationship on the amount of memories you have. If you experience more in your environment then you will most likely have more memories of things like the values and morals that they have instilled in you.

This brings me to the next thing that I want to talk about. Despite the actual location part of a home, the people involved in being a part of your home also help display the significance of your home. Your home as a child wouldn’t be as meaningful if your parents weren't a part of it. They teach you and instill values into you that will most likely stick with you for a lifetime. Your parents aren't the only ones involved in your home as people like you neighbors, friends, and even congressmen can help make your home what it is today. Your friends can help make your home more enjoyable by finding things to do and keeping you entertained. Congressmen and other important figures help structure and run our homes so we can continue and hopefully improve the lives we currently live in. The people who are also a part of your home interact with you and provide relationships that essentially connect the community. They share emotions with you and can care for you and provide support just as a home can. After all, home is where the heart is

I have traveled around a good amount through my life and it has led me to deduce that our homes, especially in different regions, can vary so much from one another. Our environment, or location, really defines the needs and corresponding values we may need to know in order to become productive in the future. If you live in the south, you will most likely need to learn the process of farming over those who call the north their home. Through these variations things like accents, traditions, and many other aspects of life can take on their own special twists. If you live on a farm, your family may be held more important over other things because you are in a rural community. On the other end of the spectrum a person in the big city might need to have a higher respect for their connections with those outside their family tree in order to take into consideration things like job networks and references that are sometimes completely unnecessary in the small towns. These variations also can inhibit or allow for more opportunities or quality of life over the others. Depending on where you call your home, your way of life can be completely different from those outside of your hometown.

One final point that I think is important to hit on is about how home is a comfort zone. Like I said before it is a place that can help pick you up when you're down. As you progress through time in your home, you build connections and your roots to that home become stronger. Moving out is a big part of homes because it is basically the action of changing homes. Like Sean Kwon said on my transition note, through these movements adapting is a very important part of changing homes. Moving out of a well-establish home can be one of the most challenging adjustments to make but since I personally have lived in the same house at birth, I can't attest to this. From what I can imagine, leaving behind the familiar faces and location you have grown to know and love must be pretty difficult. As we experience more, the bonds between what we are involved in grow stronger ,so severing those ties becomes even more difficult as the days pass. The good thing is that, if moving out is an unavoidable situation, there is much more out there than just your home to experience. Like I said before, your home represents a comfort zone. In order to improve your life at the end of the day, you must perform actions that force you to push the envelope of this comfort zone. This allows you to experience more and in turn increase the capacity of things I've mentioned in previous notes like your knowledge, skills, and interests as well as a multitude of other facets in life. Moving is one of the best ways to accomplish this. Regardless of switching homes or what home you have, homes help form the base and structure for our lives and allow us to build off of them and expand our lives.

-Allan Nicholas

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