True home

What Bowen's text got me thinking about is his intimation, the implication, that "home" is not to be found here, but only once we die, in the afterlife, in Heaven, if you will.

My trouble with this is the fact that it is precisely this view of "home" that has been perpetrated by organized religion for as long as I can remember, and it would seem - if you read even just a little bit of history - for a long, long time. What bothers me about it is the fact that it provides too much "justification" for our miserable lives here. Granted, we've made all kinds of "progress" and we are drowning in creature comforts, but oddly enough, even in this day and age, in the very straightforward, down-to-earth mind of the singer, we still haven't managed to have Heaven on Earth. There is still something missing, there is still the loneliness, the isolation, the alienation ... all those sensations that are the opposite of what we consider to be "home".

Oh, I can hear some of you already: but it's always been that way (the "way-it-is" fallacy, again), and who is little ol' me to change something that big (the "I'm-just-me" fallacy, also again)? We're just always getting in our own way, it would seem.

I can't be the only one that it might have occurred to that maybe that's why we've been put here in the first place: to make this place our home. We're all in this together folks. The history of DNA shows us that we're all somehow related, if you go back far enough, or if you take the Adam-and-Eve story seriously. What we do is just limit ourselves in the oddest kinds of ways and we do so with an energy that could just as easily be redirected to something a lot more constructive.

No, folks ... I hate to be the one to break it to you (OK, not really), but it's just us, right here, right now. You can believe in a Creator, something greater than ourselves, and you can believe that there is nothing but the matter we encounter in this particular reality. It doesn't matter. All of us on this planet, whether we like it or not, or whether we can satisfactorily explain it or not, are simply all faced with the same, common fate. In other words, if we don't do it, it just isn't going to get done.

If things are bad, if things aren't like they should be, if things aren't like what we would like them to be, there is nobody to blame but ourselves. This is our home, and it seems to me that it's high time to start treating it as such, and treating each other as the family we actually are. If we did, we wouldn't have to wait for death before we had our togetherness. Instead, we're just killing ourselves with a loneliness that is self-induced, because we apparently can't see the obvious.

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.

Togetherness

There are two things about Wade's little ditty, the first of which is the idea of "togetherness".

Of the song's eight stanzas, four of them (1, 2, 5, and 6) are context-setters: they ask questions or make statements about the singer's feelings about life. The other four (3-4 & 7-8) constitute two two-stanza refrains in which he presents his solution to the problem. Unsurprisingly, the "problem" is the sense of pain and frustration caused by loneliness; the "solution" is, in a word, "togetherness". It is by and through others that we become whole. And there's nothing new about this either. So what about the song got me thinking?

The theme addressed in this simple song is one that forms the heart of most modern music (and by that I mean rock & roll, country & western, rhythm & blues, and all their many variations) for as long as I've been listening. This theme has been stated, sung, spoken, crooned, warbled and shouted so often that I'm beginning to think we have simply tuned it out. I mean, how hard can it be? We all feel better when we feel and know that there are others - just one significant other - who care about us. We all feel better when we know and feel that we care about them in return, and even when it involves people who aren't even aware of our feelings. This is, in other words, something I'm sure practically every single one of us have had a some, several, or many points in our lives. In fact, I would be so bold as to maintain that it is a universal human experience, for I've seen it and felt it everywhere I have ever been.

Why is it then - and now we're getting to the reflection part - that the world's still such a nasty place at times? Why is it that so many people too often feel just like the singer of the song? Why are feelings of isolation, solitude, and loneliness so widespread? It doesn't seem to make much sense. In fact, to me it doesn't make any sense at all.

Maybe that's what's so difficult about it: it's so simple. Like the Golden Rule ... easy to say, straightforward as all get-out, and seemingly impossible to put into practice. But, I don't find that such a satisfying explanation. If we simply can't, we won't, and if we don't, there's no hope, and that's what I'm trying to avoid.

But, there is something else about the song that got me thinking, and it's what the singer sees as a pre-condition for the solution. Next time ...

If we ever make it home

OK, so making things up is a big part of our lives, that can't be the end of the story. We do this in many more aspects of our lives than just business or economics. It's actually something that we do more often than not, and like is so often the case, we do it without really even thinking, so let me take another example:

A reported-deceased-but-still-much-alive fraternity brother from long-times-past turned me on to a Wade Bowen song (with the same title as this post) that I decided to share with you, for it got me thinking. It's not that I'm going sentimental on you, rather, there is an ultimate point to all of this. Here are the lyrics (with some help from Weldon B.):

Is anybody out there searching
Has anybody lost the way
Am I the only one who’s hurting
Today

Must have got some bad directions
How’d we ever end up here
All this pain and desperation
And fear

If we ever make it home
They’ll be peace like we’ve never known
Nobody’s gonna walk alone
We’ll be leaning on each other

Every wall that we’ve built up high
Is gonna fall right before our eyes
Love will surely conquer hate
If we ever make it home

There’s darkness in the daylight
As the devil works his trade
He’s the first one to the gravesite
With a smile on his face

There’s a flicker in the distance
Where a single candle glows
And another walking with us
Who knows

If we ever make it home
They’ll be peace like we’ve never known
Nobody’s gonna walk alone
We’ll be leaning on each other
Loving one another

Every wall that we’ve built up high
Is gonna fall right before our eyes
Love will surely conquer hate
If we ever make it home

Oh if we ever make it home

You see, it's just a simple, straightforward, red-dirt text. It's neither high-end poetry, nor profoundly philosophical, nor should it be. It is, like any good song, though, one that should stimulate us to reflection.

The reflections are next.

Home again

After two weeks around where I was born, I know just how right Mr. Wolfe was ... or is. He might have said it a while ago, but it's as valid a statement as ever. Truths, should there be such a thing, are eternal, or so I'm told.

It makes you wonder about concepts like "home". What is that, anyway? Home is where you hang your hat, say some. Home is where the heart is, maintain others. I did notice in my conversations with the family that no one buys a house anymore. They only buy homes. But didn't someone else live there before? It makes me wonder: is "home" a place or a feeling?

I think I'm going to go with the latter. Home is, to my mind, simply where you feel "at home". That sounds more like a tautology than a truth, but how else could it be, really? My kids, for example, were born one place, grew up in another, and are living entirely somewhere else. If you ask them where "home" is, what are they going to say? My guess is that home to them is where they feel most at home. In today's overly mobile society, they are more the norm than those who, like my father, are born and grow up somewhere (that is, within a limited radius of miles) and who will die there as well.

It may seem trivial, but if you go back to where you were born and visit family and old friends, the question comes up more than once; namely, "How does it feel to be home again?" But am I? Am I home or am I simply there where I was born? I can't answer for anyone else, but for me, the answer is home is where I'll be when the vacation is over.