Home

I wonder about the idea of "home." I have been looking for this idea for the majority of my life. Do we really have a place to call home? Or is it based on people we know? Is there a culture that feels like home? Somewhere we are made for? I call Colorado Springs home because it is where I grew up and where my immediate family resides. I don't, however, have any mushy, glowing feeling about Colorado Springs. I like it. I know it. I live in it from time to time, but it doesn't feed me, sustain me, nourish me. Ireland felt the most like what I imagine home to feel like. I fit there like I have never fit anywhere else. I came from that land and my ancestry is rooted there. I could see glimpses of myself in the interactions I had with people there, whether they were deep or impacting or not.
So what makes a home? Family? Comforts? Familiarity? A closet and not having to live out of a suitcase? When someone asks you to plant roots, does it have to be in one place, monotonous, to be valid? Or can you plant roots in an idea, a cause, a belief? I don't feel uprooted, but I clearly have not stayed in one place for long in the last few years. Does that make what I do or who I am invalid? Irrational? Immature?
I wonder about our corporate idea of roots and solidarity. It may not look or feel like the traditional definition, but what I have and what my friends have is authentic. I am convinced of that.