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“Home is where the heart is.” Not many sayings are truer than that! The keys to truly understanding the true meaning of that proverb are the words home and heart.
What emotions and memories do those words stimulate within you? For me home is my sanctuary. Home is the place where I can shut the world out. Home is the place that love is at its purest and dearest. You can tell I’m somewhat of an idealist?!? 🙂
If you really think about it, what this aphorism is telling us is that our heart determines, or constructs for us, our sense of home.
Home, however, can be more than your dwelling. Home is, as the old adage says, where the heart is. Our sense of home is also constructed from our hobbies and deepest desires of what is good and right in our world. You can say it’s where our innocence lies.
If our heart is looking into a mirror it will see its home.
As an avid family historian, Virginia is home to me even though I don’t live there. I’ve spent countless hours researching my ancestors who lived along the Northern Neck and much of my sense of self identity comes from that part of the world. Setting foot on the places my ancestors walked would be like me visiting hallowed ground.
That area is a home for me because it’s the place from where my family history in the United States originates. It’s my ancestral home, where my much of my ancestral heart lies.
Along side the timeless “home is where the heart is” exists the phrase “hearth and home.”
A hearth is a fireplace, a place to cook and gather the family at meal times; it was also what kept you warm at night. During the middle ages in England the ‘hearth tax’ originated to count families because each family required a place in their dwelling to cook food and keep warm, their hearth. It was a requisite component of every family’s home. The hearth became a symbol of the home.
I have even heard a rendition to “home is where the heart is” as “home is where the hearth is.”
The hearth tax eventually made its way from England to colonial Virginia, as Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. Founded in 1607. 🙂
Our hearts are guided by our memories! Our hearts are connected to our homes because of the memories that home has provided. From all of our “firsts” in life to the feeling we get when we are there. I have always loved the word LIVE because it can either be the verb live as in “live life,” or it can be the adjective live as in “live and direct!”
A sense of place has always been very huge for me. Just as huge are physical places themselves.
You can feel the energy of a good place, especially the ones that you are connected to and that sense of connectivity really drives our sense of self in many ways. Our hearts are connected to places for very real, logical, and often tangible reasons. These ‘homes’ provide for us portals of good energy that serve to refresh us and act as mirrors to our souls, our hearts.
They heal and they can act as a sanctuary, both physically, emotionally, historically, and spiritually.
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