Home is the metaphysical and built environment that surrounds you and that you reside in. Home can be real and imagined places and spaces. It can be a mental state that you go into to find assurance, refuge, and peace. Oftentimes, the houses that people pay so much for are not their homes. The dominant reason for this is they have not allowed themselves to construct a meaningful notion or notions of home. A house will not just automatically be a home. This is also true about being at home in your personal life. It will not be until you embrace being yourself that you will find your home. Far too many people are living lives that are not the lives that they want to live because they are uncomfortable with engendering ideas of home that challenge the status quo. Many people lack the courage to create a notion of home that would offer an alternative to the phony notion(s) of home that they currently enact and employ. At the end of the day, people must understand that they will never find a true home until they are willing to love being themselves—their true selves. In The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch refers to “a homeland of identity” in discussing the idea of utopia. I contend that you can find your “homeland of identity” when you are willing to be yourself.
Never allow yourself to have low self-esteem. You should feel proud of yourself—there’s no one like you. Recognize your value. You must be willing to live your own life and not the life that your mother, father, friends, and/or society expects and demands you to live. You will never be at home when you live the life that others want you to live.
Although I know it’s cliché to say that home is where the heart is, it is really true that you will find your home when you are courageous enough to live like your heart wants you to live. It will take true courage, however. Unfortunately, I don’t know too many people who I’m around or too many people that I’m not around who are willing to simply be themselves. Most of the people who I’m around are living the lives that their parents want them to live and that society’s traditional expectations for them induce them to live. Most of them lack the courage to dream a different possibility for their lives. Most of them lack the courage to live a life that is truly representative of who they want to be.
When you start seriously contemplating about what home is, you will be truly unsettled, unnerved, and unhoused. The reason for this is you will be forced to think about the various falsehoods in your life and how much time, energy, and effort you invest in trying to make them appear as real. You can always tell those folk who don’t have a home—they are always uptight, always performing, always masking, always seeking attention, always being inauthentic, always uncomfortable, always getting on the bandwagon, always trying to show people how they are just like them, and etc.
You will be homeless when you elect to live a life that is fusions of multiple identities that are truly alien to the identity you truly long to embrace, but lack the courage to embrace it.
Under all that skin, who are you really? Behind all of that performing, who are you really? Taking away all those falsehoods, who are you really? The world needs to know who you really are. Why is it that you feel that you must perform for your public audiences when you really want to act like you do with your private audiences? I contend that most people are not living but are just performing.
The people who matter and who have mattered have been those folk who have been able to muster the courage to be themselves. When you are not willing to be yourself, you will wonder lost without a home. When you are not willing to be yourself, you will constantly be at war with yourself. It will appear that you are actually fighting with your own body. Life has to be so miserable living a life that others want you to live and not the life you want to live.
Find true happiness. Find yourself. Find your homeland of identity. Find home.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Revolutionary Paideia 
Great post! I think pieces like this helps people realize it’s okay to have self-esteem. I really think reflection pieces are both good for the writer and the reader. I know when I write about “personal” issues or ways to motivate myself, I feel better after writing; same applies when reading.
Finding a place where you’re comfortable really makes life easy. I’ve always been comfortable in my skin and abilities. I consider that a blessing but sometimes you have to be reminded where you are in life. Being homeless! Love it-
Might have to check out this book
Thanks, Drew! One of the greatest contributions that I feel that I can make to other people is to encourage them to have the courage to simply be themselves. It’s a message that I promote everyday through various mediums, including in face-to-face discourses. I let my life be an example of the true happiness, fun, and value you can have when you simply be yourself. Yes, when one writes reflective pieces, the writing process helps the writer too, even if he or she does not immediately recognize it. Yes, it’s truly a blessing to be yourself. A life that is lived simply to please the expectations of others is a life that is not worth living. Principle of Hope by Ernst Bloch is three volumes long (extremely long), so I’m not sure if you have that kind of time to check out the whole book with all that you have going.
I’ll just take this as a mental note. Great book!