I wonder when home became not enough.
I recently went on a great vacation. It had it all. Sun, sand, and the ocean. Time with family was abundant and I even got time to read. I thought when I got home that I’d feel a sense of sadness for the end of the trip or exhaustion from the trip. Yet, I didn’t feel that at all.
Walking into my home wasn’t a moment of begrudgingly getting back to reality. It was energizing. I unpacked, went to the grocery store, did a quick workout, and got my son fed, bathed, and to bed and felt great.
The question hit me, “Why did I assume I’d feel so crappy when I got home?”
Had I felt terrible after other trips? No. Had I struggled on this trip in particular? No. Was my home not safe or otherwise a bad place to be? No.
I had assumed because I had believed a lie society has told me. Often overtly and almost always subtly we’ve all been told that home is not enough.
Think about it. We all have friends on social media who post a million pictures from their two-day vacation to anywhere but home. Yet, they never post otherwise. The only piece of their life worth sharing is the .005% of their life that they happen to not be home.
I don’t think it’s their fault. They just bought the same lie we all have. That home is not enough. It’s not interesting enough, not fancy enough, not exotic enough.
Here’s another example. Zillow, the number one real estate website, averages 57 million visits per month. 57 million! Compare that with the average number of homes bought and sold – about 417,000 on average per month – and the discontent with home is glaring. We want out of our home so much that we look at new homes nearly 316 times more often than we actually buy them.
And this isn’t new. In the Bible there is a story of the Isrealites after their miraculous escape from slavery in Egypt through the middle of the Red Sea complaining about their lack of food. They cry out to God to provide for them so he does. He miraculously brings manna, a sort of flat bread, to them each morning. After some time, what do they do? They complain that the manna isn’t enough and they want to move on to a place of more. Home, even with God, was not enough
At some point we bought the lie that home is never enough. Perhaps a reflection of our spoils. A society so normalized to large houses, air conditioning, garages (literal houses for our cars), and all the things homes have that we forgot how incredible it is.
We bought a new truth in the form of airline tickets, AirBnB fees, and passport stamps. I’m all for gaining new perspectives and seeing things, but when your passport becomes your Bible and the airport becomes your church, maybe it’s gone too far.
What should you do with this? I don’t know, but here’s what I’m thinking about:
- At very least take a minute to be grateful for your home whatever it looks like. The rented apartment in the city, house in the suburbs, mansion on the hill, or cabin in the woods. Remember that many don’t have such a luxury.
- Stop telling people around you that they should travel more all the time. Suggesting European vacation destinations as if they are the same price and convenience of buying a bag of chips is annoying at best and damaging at worst.
- Quit flaunting that .005% of your life and start embracing the beauty of the other 99.995%. Living for .005% seems like a recipe for hating your life all together.
- Do both better. You can travel and still appreciate home at the same time. Stop scrolling Zillow all the time (you know you can’t afford that Joanna Gaines place anyway) and just be home when you’re home.
- Travel and enjoy it, but never let it fool you into thinking that you somehow leave yourself behind when you do it. As the saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are.”
Home is awesome. I love home. I won’t apologize for it anymore. You don’t have to either.