What Is Home?

when geography no longer holds the future

“Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.”

- Pierce Brown in Golden Son

We are, in many ways, more connected to what matters and less so. Our digital webs stretch across time zones and continents, bringing us news, influencers, and kindred spirits in an instant. And yet, despite all these connections, something vital feels increasingly out of reach: a sense of home.

The idea of home once meant place, geography, familiarity, and most importantly, belonging. It was the smell of a parent’s cooking, the sound of wind through known trees, the steady pulse of a community that knew you and where you came from. Home was not something you questioned; it was a given.

However, today, forces beyond our control, such as climate displacement, political instability, economic precarity, and cultural fragmentation, are asking us to reconsider. What is home when the land beneath you no longer feels like your place?

I felt the gravity of this question while having coffee in a small café recently. A kind waiter mentioned, almost casually, that he was from Venezuela. His smile was warm but heavy. It’s the same expression I’ve seen on the faces of Palestinians, Ukrainians, Central Americans, and even some Eastern Europeans - people for whom home is no longer secure or even reachable. For most of the world, this dislocation has long been a reality. But now, even in the United States, where geographic stability was once reliable, we are being called to reckon with the unraveling of place.

And it isn’t easy. There’s something harrowing about the realization that your location, your home, is no longer your place. For many of us, place once held the imaginative space for projecting a future. We built our lives around it. We put down roots, made plans, raised children, and invested in community. But now, that same place may feel brittle, hollowed, or even hostile. What happens when your place no longer holds the space for your future?

In my upcoming book, I explore how this fragmentation of the personal, interpersonal, and cultural has left many of us disoriented. Disconnection is no longer just a social phenomenon; it’s a crisis of belonging. We are learning, often painfully, that “home” cannot be guaranteed by geography alone. And as place unroots, so too does our sense of self. Many of us are migratory now, in spirit if not in body, searching not only for shelter, but for resonance.

Of course, this dislocation affects individuals differently depending on their level of privilege. For some, the uncertainty can feel like an adventure, an invitation to reimagine life and follow threads of possibility across unfamiliar terrain. However, for the vast majority, this unmooring is not voluntary. Agency is a luxury, often at the mercy of powers larger than any individual. Borders close. Movement halts. The map of the world shrinks in real time. And still, we are asked to carry on, to make do and find home in the unknown.

Which brings me back to the question: What is home?

Perhaps it is no longer just a location. Perhaps it is a resonance, an aliveness between people and place, between body and spirit, between what matters and what endures. Maybe home is not where we are, but how we are with one another. In this sense, home is relational. It’s built in presence. It lives in attunement. And it thrives in spaces that can hold us, truly hold us, in all our complexity.

This does not mean geography is irrelevant. On the contrary, land and place still shape us. Yet when our surroundings no longer support our becoming, we must learn to listen more deeply, not just to the land, but to life itself. To what calls us forward. To what allows us to belong again.

When we do, we are being invited into a new kind of rootedness, one not bound by coordinates, but cultivated through meaningful connection. A home that lives within, between, and among us. A home that asks us not where we are from, but how we are forming…through courage, care, shared meaning, and a longing for wholeness.

This journey is not easy. But it may be necessary. And perhaps, in time, it will reveal something even more enduring than place: a home that moves with us, as we learn to move with life.