This Must Be the Place

The artist Chong Gon Byun explitly describes his idea of home as an island, a safehouse to ward off others, and a place where one can retain control of his life. Somewhat conventional of an answer but true at hearth. It's a simple question, really. "What is your idea of home?" But in actuality, if someone were to ask me where my home was and how I defined home, I'd probably just try to laugh myself out of the situation, an attempt to evade the question. But if someone were to ask me where I was from and what it's like where I'm from, I'd try to narrate everything I knew about Toronto down into 5 lines. Or if someone asked where I lived, the answer would be much more rhetorical than empathetic. Seoul. I live in Seoul. But suppose that hypothetically I didn't like Seoul and I was reluctant to say that I lived in Seoul for whatever reason. Does that mean I don't consider Seoul as my home? The assumption here would be that home is a place that you connect emotionally, more specifically through positive emotions such as belongingness, comfort, and warmth. But I don't think it's that discrete, because places can grow on you even if you disliked it initially. So then hypothetically I've come to terms with Seoul and now I don't mind calling Seoul my home. Was choice involved? I mean, by merely considering a place as home and then choosing to declare a place as my home by living in it, has the definition of home been reduced to just a choice, and only a choice at that? To reverse the conjecture, would it be strange for someone to have lived at one place his whole life without ever feeling that was his home? I think it would be strange but not impossible. I'd think that for you to feel at home, you'd need to appreciate it first. And not in a way that makes you feel exclusive and special, but kind of more like how a kid might see another kid with the same teddy bear but still takes care, loves, and calls his teddy bear for his own. Ubiquitous, in a sense. Paradoxically, I think you'd need to accept your surroundings before you can accept your room or apartment as your home. An openness to venture and appreciate your local environment for gratitude towards your shelter and closed-ness, perhaps.

So what is your idea of home? To be honest, I wouldn't know how to answer that question. To borrow Heidegger's words, I'd say that the idea of home is an effect of dwelling, or simply one of the modes of humans being, the act of existing. And dwelling is simply a mere goal as to building. In that sense, the physical edifice of a home is not so much important as the one for our mind and soul. That is, the implications of which, if home is the effect of our being then the meanings and the gravity of its essence are implied through our actions. Simply put, the more we enrich our relationship with our surroundings the more consequential our dwelling and our ideas of home will become. But still that's too simple of an answer and in half truth I would've implicitly recited this answer beforehand to have evaded the question to begin with. That is, if you asked me the question and my initial evasive laughter didn't work on you.

But in all likelihood you didn't ask me the question, happy new year!