The phrase apparently goes “Home is where the heart is.” I believe the phrase was meant to be symbolic of where the subject’s thoughts and preferences lay. I don’t agree with that interpretation.
For the last 6 years I’ve lived away from home. I spent one year at university, two years in Toronto, and returned to university for the past three years. Although I love visiting my parents (what the symbolic interpretation of the phrase would imply is “home”), I know this isn’t where I live. However, it is home. But only so far as I am living here for the next 10 days. Then I will return to the place I normally sleep and where I pay (too much for) rent and live 96% of the year.
But that wasn’t always home. I’ve been in three different complexes at university this year. Each of those places was home for the time I lived there.
So what is my home? It’s the place where my physical heart beats. It is wherever I am. Wherever my head hits the pillow at night, that is home. Home is literally where the heart is. And to make the symbolic statement true, I have to work to love where I am.
Maybe there’s a lesson in that…
Love where you are; you never know how much longer you will be there.