Why are we happier at home than in a house: the difference between a mental and physical abode
I want to challenge your concept of a home. Home is a soulful feeling, an expansion of one’s heart in place and time, beyond the doors, walls and anything that separates. Being at home is to be with yourself, connected and open. The fireplace flames cosily deep inside you at home. A house is the physical place where we register our ‘home’ address, it is functional. A home is how we feel about that place. Do I belong here, am I safe, nurtured, and able to do what I love and need to do here? Ultimately, to be at home is about you and whether you allow yourself to feel happy where you are. It is a sense of belonging somewhere. That place may be forever the same or it may change as life sails you around the far seas to new lands of discovery.
Placing one’s home: rooting in
A home can also be a place in the public area. Many writers spent more time in their favourite café or a library that this public space became more of a home for them than the place they slept, showered and brushed their teeth. In most poor countries, a house is exactly that, a place to sleep, well and to cook for yourself and the family. There are no spare rooms, so if a child needs to do a homework for school, they might have to set up a table on the street in front of the house. Like this pony-tailed girl in Luang Prabang, Laos. I wonder where she felt more at home? With her parents, at her makeshift desk or out in the wild hills playing with other kids? It would all depend on how she felt — abusive or arguing parents do not make a happy home, noisy disruptions on the street can unnerve one, and while nature nurtures, perhaps she would prefer the kitchen hearth.
If I must insist on a geographical location, and we all ned to for practical reality, my home is near the Mediterranean sea. Surrounded by its mood-lifting colour palette that calms and invigorates me at once, where sunshine embalms my skin in a comforting, somewhat familiar care, as if I were born there once in some previous life. My home would be in a blooming garden, with magnolias and olive trees, maybe some citrus, so splendid that I forget to breathe. I sit in my home on a remote sandy beach, only birds survey my whereabouts. Like a plant that grows in the right environment, I am able to grow my roots deep in the ground there. Home is where your roots thrive, taking as many nutrients as they need to grow. It is a feeling.
Beyond purpose: why are we happier at home than in a house or apartment?
I have always been my happiest out in nature. My parents had to herd me back into the house before the night fell. Only when the weather became unfavourable, I sheltered in for the entire day, anxious about the next intermezzo of sunshine teasing me out into the snow, across slippery paths and splashy roads. If only once each day, under the umbrella of an open sky on crisp, fragrant, fresh air, be it a garden or a park in a city, I was at home. Otherwise, I am just a vagabond sleeping in some bed, safe from the predating insects and men. Comfort is one of the main reasons we live indoors. Flimsy weather, unwanted animal intrusions and other people potentially threatening us lock us away from the wild world outside. Survival calls up.
Yet, are comfort, safety and survival enough for us to be happy? Any negative emotion casts us far away from home into the ghastly dessert of suffering.
Attachment is another hindrance to happiness, and some of us cling to our house like leeches, unable to ease into holidays worrying about all that can go wrong with our home, far away. Thus vulnerable any incident affects us more profoundly as if confirming our preocuppation.
We are unique creatures with different wants and needs. Fulfilled desires temporarily spark joy, but as I wrote in my musing on happiness it is ultimately the mind that decides to be happy.
Home is a soulful feeling, an expansion of one’s heart in place and time, beyond the doors, walls and anything that separates. Being at home is to be with yourself, connected and open — united with the present moment. Negative emotions cast you far away from home into the ghastly dessert of suffering.
Invaders of privacy and fear
The homeless in sunny California, hanging out with their friends in Santa Monica or the Venice beach enjoy stunning hikes in the vast Canyons spread across LA. Yet, meeting a dishevelled man slurring over my legs in tight leggings, broke my sense of home in nature. When being invaded by a life threatening animal we need to be brave, unafraid and able to fight if we want to feel still at home outside. No-one to police or protect me either that one early morning savouring my favourite beach alone. I felt uneasy about the two refugees hiding in the sand dunes, but I decided ignoring them, kept reading my book and in a few minutes there was no trace of their presence. While this Mediterranean beach is perhaps my favourite place in this world to dwell, that very morning I was very uncomfortable. Ever since I arrive later so I am not being there alone, but the magic was lost. Do you feel more at home just by yourself or do you prefer many people surrounding you? Our sense of comfort and safety differ with character. One keeps the heavy door shut at all times, while another is happier to lounge on one’s open lawn welcoming passers by.
The symbol of the House
In archetypal terms, the symbol of the house includes your body. When you breathe with awareness or meditate, do you feel at home with yourself?
You must take care of either to function properly. Yet your home is also your spirit, and that is why countless superstitions emerged with ensuing protective rituals such as blessing the door or burning sage to ward off bad spirits. People can be so sensitive at their house that they use feng-shuei or crystals to balance the energy in each room. The first objects I brought to my latest rental apartment were my soul crystals. I placed celestite and clear quartz exactly where the caring landlady had her own precious rocks previously installed. My gesture of respect for her home she claimed left unwillingly.
The self is the house protecting the ego. A child constructs its own house of his/her self. Later, through our own room if we are lucky to have one or as adults we express ourselves through the house we create and share. It is an entire realm. In astrology birth charts are divided into 12 houses bound to the time you were born in.
Ovid brought the charity aspect of hospitality to our attention, when in his Metamorphosis a cottage turns into a temple caring for the needy, offering them drinks and food, a genuinely open house.
Home is a place welcoming friends and family. The Greek goddess Hestia kept the home hearth warm. Hospitality includes comfort. The temperature must be pleasant, so floor heating is the one luxury I find the most enjoyable and useful in any house with cool climate, particularly in bathroom.
Stereotypes and homes
Domesticity used to be more a female urge as men mingled in the public spheres of clubs, jobs and pubs. Girls and then women dream about their own house. As girls we built our first homes in the sand, the trees, even in the wardrobes of our parents bedroom — I did it all. Creating one’s own home as the physical place seems something so deeply embedded in us that once we get it built or reconstructed, we become so attached to its flesh, the tender limbs and firm core that we cannot leave it for too long. Our rituals, daily schedules, our oxygen-sharing indoor plants, pets, the garden, all call our attention. Yet, do we have time for all this today? With the rising equality, women spend more of their life building their careers and social connections outside their abode, and they need help. Busy, without a family or a partner, the same old truth knocks on our soul:
Our home becomes our lover. It is necessary sometimes to be apart, yet never for too long.
Do you think much about the function of a lover? While, there is a certain practicality of the other sex (or same gender for that purpose), we can exchange much more magic with our lover, we can grow together and bring more joy into our lives. Still, a house shall suit our particular lifestyle and daily routines. A bath makes a difference for me, for another a vast loving room does wonders.
I was inspired by Happy Interior Blog, books like Taschen’s Homes for our Time, Axel Vervoord’s Wabi Inspirations and How to Make a House a Home by Ariel Kaye dedicated to the design and functionality of our houses. Still, In never copied anything, it was just the air of it, the particular fragrance of light, colour and materials used.
None of the above photos are my houses. While I would not refuse settling in either, near a beach surrounded by lush garden or jungle, I imagine, yet someone has to take care of them. I know people who have three houses, but they feel more like burdens. Like a harem, one has to give up privacy to own more than one, and naturally high expenditure. I prefer things simple. A small apartment in a city and house by the sea, let’s dream.
Isn’t it a marvellous game to imagine what would your dream house look like? A drawing of your dream house tells you plenty about your needs and your attitude with your family. For example a chimney symbolises the affective life and if smoke from it comes out then there is an internal tension, a very large door means you are very dependent, sidewalks open access to the outer world and if you add a tree — that is your deepest self not shown to others.
Once during a shinrin yoku practice at the Los Angeles Arboretum, we were tasked to find ourselves an ideal home right there in the forest. Later, we were to explain to another person why we chose that location, which teased out our needs, truly revealing!
You can take a step closer to that dream by bringing one chosen aspect of it to reality. Change something in your apartment or house to make it feel more like home. Add fragrant candles, a vinyl player, a fluffy carpet to spread across like on a sofa. Remember, while your house shines like from a design magazine, it will never be your home if it does not inhabit the right people, light, reflect who you are, including your past and also support your mind-body rituals.