There was once a king who built a castle for his newborn son. He commanded all personnel to shield his boy from the misfortunes of the outside world. As a result, the boy lived a comfortable existence free of mental and physical pain.
When the boy became a young man, he decided to escape the confines of his home for the day. To his dismay, he encountered scores of people suffering in the streets. The young man cursed his father for concealing these realities, then promptly abandoned the safety of his home in search of life’s greater truths.
By leaving home, this man became one of the most celebrated people in history. Eventually, people called him the Buddha. After seven years of wandering, the Buddha returned home to educate his father and his kingdom on the way to Enlightenment.
***
Home is both a physical place and a state of mind. When we settle into both our physical homes (places we feel we belong) and conceptual homes (the buildup of experiences that house our beliefs and biases), we “find” ourselves.
Consider the idiom, I feel at home, which reflects contentment and safety on many levels. Safety is a primary human need. Even in homes that are built around negativity and abuse, there’s still security in knowing what to expect.
It’s human nature to want to be rooted in a stable home, to stand upon expectations and values like they’re a concrete foundation. This is how we’re built.
However, it’s imperative we begin to feel more at home in the wandering.
Whether your visions of home are lovely or dismal, it’s time to step outside.
I’m proposing we unlatch our doors and explore a more open-minded society. Open-mindedness enriches the world by encouraging empathy, erasing “otherness,” and overall, promoting peace.
Dorothy felt at home in the simplicity of Kansas, just as Hitler felt at home in a country he believed, with heinous adjustments, could be ideal. Hitler demonstrated that although home can be reassuring, it can also be dangerously exclusionary.
Let’s think outside the box. I’ve come to realize “the box” represents our own individual homes, both physical and conceptual.
Often, we close the door to those who challenge our foundation and, instead, only seek facts that support our already cemented beliefs. The technical term for this is “confirmation bias.”
The only reason society has progressed beyond the wheel is because of people like Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, who didn’t just venture outside the box but lived there. Additionally, their explorations weren’t only for personal gain but for the betterment of society.
Curie believed, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less” (Benarde, 1973, p. 5). When we shut ourselves in, we’re assured because everything makes sense inside those walls. However, we also don’t seek to understand our neighbors.
