one of the most important and meaningful
activities were ever engaged in is the
creation of a home over a number of
years typically with a lot of thought
and considerable dedication we assemble
furniture crockery pictures rugs
cushions versus sideboards taps door
handles and so on into a distinctive
constellation we anoint with the word
home our homes will not necessarily be
the most attractive or sumptuous
environments we could spend time in
there are always hotels or public spaces
that would be a good deal more
impressive but after we've been
traveling a long while after too many
nights in hotel rooms or on the beds of
friends we typically feel a powerful
ache to return to our own furnishings an
ache that has little to do with material
comfort per se we need to get home to
remember who we are our homes have a
memorializing function and what they're
helping us to remember is strangely
enough ourselves we can see this need to
anchor identity and matter in the
history of religion humans have from the
earliest days expended enormous care and
creativity on building homes for their
gods they haven't felt that their gods
could live just anywhere out in the wild
or as it were in hotels they've believed
that they needed special places temple
homes where their specific characters
could be stabilized through art and
architecture for the ancient Greeks
Athena was the goddess of wisdom
rationality and harmony and in 420 BC
they completed a home for her on the
slopes of the Acropolis it wasn't a
large home about the size of an average
American kitchen but it was an
exceptionally apt and beautiful one the
temple felt dignified but approachable
it was rigorously balanced and logical
serene and poised it was its inhabitant
artfully sculpted in limestone the
Greeks took such care over Athena's
temple home because they understood the
human mind
they knew that without architecture we
struggle to remember what we care about
and more broadly who we are to be told
in words that Athena represented grace
and balance
wasn't going to be enough on its own
there needed to be a house to bring the
idea forcefully and continuously to
consciousness without there being
anything grandiose or supernatural in
the idea our homes are also temples they
are temples to us we're not expecting to
be worshipped but we are trying to make
a place that like a temple adequately
embodies our spiritual values and merits
creating a home is frequently such a
demanding process because it requires us
to find our way to objects that can
correctly convey our identities we get
fussy because objects are in their own
ways all hugely eloquent to chairs that
perform much the same physical role can
articulate entirely different visions of
life one chair by the swiss
twentieth-century architect liu
Corbusier will speak of efficiency and
excitement about the future an
international spirit and impatience
around nostalgia and a devotion to
reason and the other by the English 19th
century designer William Morris will
speak of the superiority of the
pre-industrial world the beauty of
tradition the appeal of patience and the
pull of the local an object ends up
feeling right when it speaks
attractively about qualities that were
drawn to but don't quite possess strong
enough doses off in our everyday lives
the desirable object gives us a more
secure hold on values that are present
yet fragile in ourselves it endorses and
encourages important themes in us the
smallest things in our homes whisper to
us they offer us encouragement reminders
consoling thoughts warnings or
correctives
as we go about making breakfast or do
the accounts in the evening the quest to
build a home is connected up with a need
to stabilize and organize our complex
selves it's not enough to know who we
are in our own minds we need something
more tangible material and sensuous to
pin down the diverse and intermittent
aspects of our identities we need to
rely on a certain kind of cutlery
bookshelves laundry cupboards and
armchairs
to align us with who we are and seek to
be we're not boasting we try to gather
our identities in one receptacle
preserving ourselves from erosion and
dispersal home means the place where our
soul feels that it has found its proper
physical container where everyday the
objects we live among quietly remind us
of our most authentic commitments and
loves
please do comment like and subscribe and
take a look at our shop for more from
the School of Life
you