Following our blog posts from last week, we delved further into the notion of what home means and how it connects to our sense of belonging. It became clear that there was wide range of conceptions across the class, but one particular point of interest was in the physical aspect. What happens when the physical environment around us changes? Are people defined by the things we put around them or the things they’re put in relation to? What happens when factors such as homelessness, poverty, lack of safety or global mobility effect the physical nature of our homes and how do we relocate to create what we know as our homes? In answer to these questions, the phrase that came to my mind was ‘safe haven’. The feelings most associated with being at home is comfort and safety, and when home becomes inaccessible due to the previously mentioned factors, the common theme was the lack of that sense of security. However, going beyond the physical environment, I think that feelings of belonging are also inherently connected to the people you are surrounded by. Yet this is just as complex.
Is our sense of home and belonging defined by our social or geographical connections? I thought the distinction might be that our social connections are our sense of ‘community’ and our geographical connections are what we perceive as our ‘neighbourhood’. Though when trying to make distinctions between concepts such as ‘community’ and ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘place’ and space’ it seemed to me a mere matter of semantics – that perhaps the connection and identification we feel with our homes cannot be strictly or linguistically defined. Instead, it is a feeling and an emotion, something that is constantly evolving as we grow with our environment. I feel this is particularly exemplified in the context of our bedrooms, which could be seen as an extension of ourselves. They are personalised to reflect who we are, and often they will remain the same for long periods of time until there comes a time when we find ourselves arranging and rearranging, redecorating and upgrading our spaces to reflect our own changes and growth. And therefore, the loss of home can to some degree feel like a loss of ourselves and may cause us start to building a more mobile sense of belonging, and making connections to things that aren’t just physical.
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