Home

Home, I suppose, is a lot of things to a lot of people. Home is

... where you hang your hat (or, as Groucho Marx put it, where you hang your head).
... where the heart is.
... where your bread is buttered.
... the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes.
... where you can scratch where it itches.
... where you can say anything you please, because nobody pays any attention to you anyway. (Joe Moore)
... the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. (Robert Frost)

Yes, it is a lot of different things. But, what all of these ideas - serious or humorous - have in common is a feeling of being accepted, a feeling of being where you belong. And, all of these different ways of saying it is that "home" is a place where there is a certain amount of peace (even if it can be hectic at times). Home, for perhaps the very same reasons (which is also, just a tad schizophrenic), is something that we too often just take for granted. Home, going home, being home ... are all so self-evident that we simply overlook how important it is and how meaningful it is to everyone who has ever experienced it.

But, another idea is that it's somehow related to the family, too. Granted, not everyone gets along with their family. Lord knows how many these days no longer deserve to be even called that, but this also makes it small, but above all, personal. Yes, home is a very personal idea, one that is personal to each and every one of us.

For some reason, though, our singer appears to be having trouble finding his ... or at least finding his way there, or perhaps back there. This is also a common theme. Home is sometimes where you spend half you life trying to get away, and the other half trying to get back. Again, that's part of the low-end schizophrenia that so characterizes too many of us these days. But you don't have to have run away to get that feeling. "Hansel and Gretel" is as power a fairy tale as it is, not just because of the witch or the gingerbread house, but because it's a tale of being lost from home.

No, home is a very powerful, very pervasive, and very personal idea. This is one that we haven't necessarily made up, but it is certainly one that we color in many different ways. What makes it so strong, though, is that although the individual ideas of home may be different, we all immediately know what everyone is talking about whenever the notion is invoked.