Where is home?

I had a little argument at work today. The minor dispute was between me and some of my colleagues and the issue was about the concept of home. Diran, who is one of the most verbally constructive person I've ever known, was of the opinion that home is a psychological phenomenon. Using his quick command of the English language, he put it straight forward that where you call your home doesn't have to do with who or what is in there, but how you feel. And I totally agreed with him.

Arinze on the other hand, who is one very brilliant chap and who calls everybody 'fellow' ("Why is this fellow parking here??", "When is this fellow coming?") objected vehemently. He said, "How on earth can your home be a thing of the mind? That's not possible!"

Odunsi, also, who is my boss, joined the Arinze train. He said that there's no where on earth that can be compared to his village, in spite of any dearth of social amenities. "I feel totally at home in my village", he said.

The argument spanned our entire break period, and even spilled into our work time. Arinze was busy spilling words like 'roots', 'origin', 'family' etc. "Your home is your connections to your roots," he argued. "It has nothing to do with the mind". In fact he gave a very funny analogy. He said when one goes to the toilet and feels at peace, does that make the toilet your home? I couldn't help laughing, in spite of the jab towards my argument. In a little while the row subsided, and we went back to work.

On my way home, I had to reflect further on our heated conversations. Who exactly had the right definition of home? Was I wrong? Or was Arinze just bamboozling everybody?

Having looked at both sides critically and objectively, I came up with one conclusion: we were both right! The home has both concrete and abstract elements. Concrete in the sense that a proper home, in the ideal sense of the word, must consist of your parents (or children), or other memorable elements. It could be your favourite tree in the centre of the garden, or the smile on your grandmothers face when she sees you - something tangible should be part of what we call home.

But on the other hand, if we isolate these physical components, on their own, they'll mean nothing! What is there in a bloody tree surrounded by weeds?? Or in a crooked old smile with brown dentition having one or two teeth missing?? These by themselves don't have any special meaning, except those we give to them. In other words it's the feelings we associate with these things and people that make them special. It's the artifacts, and the emotions they effuse in us, that make a home a home.

Having established that both reasoning are sound, there is now the question of superior argument. Which of these two logically sound arguments is superior to the other? Two arguments may make sense, but one has to make more sense. To me the one which makes more sense is...(yes, you guessed it!)... Diran's argument - what i'd like to call the psychological logic!

It would be severely limiting, not to talk of unfair, to link the word home with family, or roots, or origin, or any of those other sentimental phrases my friend Arinze was touting. What about those with no family or no clear discernible roots? What happens to the orphan whose first conscious moments were in arms of an angry and dissatisfied social worker? Where would the orphan call home? Under the bridge where he was born and discarded? Or should the poor thing, in his quest for home, go looking for his parents who abandoned him?

Why am I even going too far sef? What happens to the regular kid who has strong roots, and origin, but who is grossly maltreated, or simply misunderstood 'at home'? The only place he would likely call home is the little corner of his room where he retreats to each day.

Or consider someone like me who has never been to his village before. I'm Ekiti, and proud; but if I get Arinze and Odunsi right, when my parents dies, then there's no where I can call home again. Kai.

Odunsi said whenever he goes to his village, he is thrilled, happy, content, in short, he feels 'at home'. But if I dare venture into my village square, I'd feel lost, confused, dejected and severely unhappy. What's missing from these two seemingly similar experience??

Let's look from another perspective: If home is about ancestral roots and origin, then half the population of the free world would come and celebrate Christmas in Africa, just because their great-great-great-great-(perhaps, even another great)-grand parent was an African slave. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of Outliers traced his ancestry through his Jamaican mother, through his slave grandmother, down to his 'roots' to some certain Ibo tribe of West Africa. I wonder why I don't see him carrying his backpack and mosquito net every winter on his way to Naija looking for home.

I think I've written enough. And I'm sure you catch my drift. Home is where your family is; the place where your fondest memories exist. But more importantly, home is just where and what you make of it!