What is Home?

Possibly just another unstable condition...



Three days before arriving back in the town where I grew up, after living for 8 months out of a backpack, I happened to sit down with an artist whose work I've admired since childhood in a conversation prompted by the question "what is home?"

There are many different answers to this question, and quite possibly just as many places.  

So what is home?  Is it where you choose to put your stuff?  Is it where you grew up? Is it where your family is? Where your heart is? Your friends? Or just simply where you sleep?

Like any young person I thought I had all of life's problems figured out in collage.  I had a wonderful epiphany and decided that home is where the people you consider to be your family is.  For me those people are spread throughout Vancouver BC, therefore there is a whole city I call home!  How great is that?  But because I'm not a Canadian citizen, I have been booted out and can no longer live there without Visas.  So now what?

I know! A backpack became home and I traveled to many spectaculare places, sharing my time with one stranger after the next. Being places I had never seen, while at the same time feeling like I had lived there before.  Somehow I had slipped into new homes so comfortable it took no almost no effort.

Now that it has all come to an end, the next step is returning to the place where I was born,  meaning home-by-default.  But none of this answers the question for what home is to me now.

This is the point where a new dissection of this ever changing condition is required in order to come to terms with the problem.  In order to reevaluate this, one needs to clear all expectations and start from scratch.

Having techniques for bringing awareness to the present will be different for everyone, for me the solution is music and art. That is what makes my world turn.  Take advantage of the things that are within your control, except that everything else is left up for mystery.  Find the answers that work for you and remember these are not the simple solutions to the question, in order for this advise to work takes great introspection and disciplined practice.  The reward?  How much you will grow as a human.

For now, home will have to be within.

Life is always evolving, welcome the changes, go with the flow.

http://www.honshin.com/ is where you can find Nicholas' work, there are slideshows for all his paintings, ceramics, jewelry, and more.