We are all obsessed, fanatical, preoccupied with the subject of ‘Home.’
Our necessity to make that four letter word an object of pride in our lives is a drive that never really ends. We all have that innate need to have a home. Some say it is a human right. This, I would agree it is. Society sees us rented, mortgaged, indebted by it, to it. Yet we strive; sweat blood and tears for it and to have the best version of it we can. This ideology is purely based on my 1st world undertaking of it, yet even at its most primitive and basic, home is a place we all crave for.
My latest photographic project sees me exploring this core societal requirement to begin to interrogate our inherent necessity for ‘Home’ and investigating the DNA of this prerequisite to see if it is a deep spiritual longing that not many realise is there. Within us. Whether our addiction to it is really a calling to a home where the truest sense of the word; a deep satisfaction with ‘Home’ is felt.
To flip the coin and address the upsetting side of “Home’, one cannot turn away from the fact that there is a staggering number of people, around the world, who are homeless. In 2015, the UN recorded that there was a figure close to 100 million people declared homeless and a further 1.6 billion people living in inadequate housing. That was 7 years ago and the trend that these figures often project, can only suggest that these figures are a lot more now.
But this calling inside us for home is a universal one, irrespective of our geography, background or ability to buy, rent or squat. Where our needs and requirements are fulfilled, perfectly.
My memory is again called to a place in the Bible that speaks of God providing enough for the birds. It speaks of our realising that if God can provide for the birds, then how much more will He provide for us, His pinnacle of creation.
As much as there is so much inequality in the world, even in the basic necessities of life, maybe our dream home isn’t where we think it is. Rather, it is somewhere else. In preparation. To be revealed at a time and point where all of us can enjoy what we get so wrong in our present age. That, like the birds of the sky who don’t toil and strive, stress and crave for a home, we too can just live without any pressures of the societal restraints that manage and stop so many accessing the basic need of a shelter above our heads.
Wouldn’t that be heaven?
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