We Homes

Neuroanthropologist John S. Allen says that humans are “fundamentally home-minded.” Home isn’t just a physical place, it is also a cognitive one shaped by our biology and our culture. “You can’t buy a home,” Allen explains. Rather, a home is something “that you have to build yourself”, so that you have a space that shelters us from the outside world and, through its comfortable familiarity, calms our senses so that we may rest and face the next day’s challenges. Besides a physical space, people also inhabit their inner homes. Everyone of us is a home to dreams, thoughts, memories, impressions, beliefs, ways of living and being, ways of carrying ourselves in this world.