Last Sleep

Home is where the 'what' is? In Stumbling on Happiness, Dan Gilbert talks about the traditional three big drivers of how your life and happiness are defined. Where you live. What you do. Who you marry. In the past you will have lived where you were born, did what your parents did, and married someone from the neighbourhood. Ken Robinson figured out that 7 of his 8 great grandparents lived within a few miles of each other growing up. Things have changed.

Last night I had my last sleep in the place I have spent the second longest in my life. I was very lucky in finding my flat pretty quickly when I moved to London. Although I looked at several places in a first day of hunting, the very first place I looked at was the one I moved in to. It has been good to me.

I have had many friends stay here with me as they pass through London. In a new Global world I have found you can't really choose to live close to family and friends or not. People move. People scatter. Our jobs are less fixed and more big decisions are open to discussion. You have to make an effort to see the people who are important to you or life can swallow you whole.

Snow greeted me shortly after arrival. Regular sunsets stuck around.

(pic taken by buddie guest Jon Adams)

From tomorrow I will no longer have a fixed base to call home. Home is a fuzzy concept though. I always smile when, well... after... my grandparents move. This doesn't happen very often and is a great source of stress in the run up, but their home seems to move with them. They have always been happy a little while after the change. Maybe it is partly because of the furniture that their place seems to be the same. Maybe it is because they have been married over sixty years. Maybe it is because they have their kids close by. Despite the global scattering, my Dad and his sisters still live in the same city as them.

Home is created by the relationships that get formed. The reason their home seems to move with them is my Gran and Grampa are a home. Wherever they are when I get to see them is their home. If that is true then we don't need to panic about the confusing world we live in. Home can be defined by how you allocate your time. There are ways to allocate that to the people who are important. Home is where the kuier is.