This weekend I had a shivanautical epiphany about the concept of HOME, and all the various ways that any one thing can be a home for another thing.

If this thing that I did not know was a home is now a home….

Well, then everything changes.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

— William Morris

Any container is a home.

Or can be. And anything can house anything else. If you want it to.

If an inbox is a home for things that people are bringing before me for my consideration, then it’s okay if I want that home to be clean.

It’s okay that I only want things in there that bring me pleasure. That I know to be useful. That I believe to be beautiful.

If a binder is a home for ideas that I’m excited about, it’s okay to spend time lovingly decorating it and making it beautiful (even if the monster collective points out that no one will ever see it but me).

If a policy is a home for the experience that I’m trying to build, it’s okay that it is firm, sturdy and dependable. In fact, it really needs to be.

If a bed is a home for sleeping…

If a blog post is a home for a certain magical and palpable culture of play and welcoming …

If breakfast is a home for caring for myself…

If my body is the actual physical home of where I live

If a bath is a home for immersion…

If five minutes of Shiva Nata is a home for rewriting the patterns that don’t work anymore…

If shavasana is a home for letting the new thing be absorbed while the old thing is released…

Then everything changes.

Without guilt or pressure: I do not have to remodel all of these homes today or this week.
Or at all, maybe.

I just need to know that they are homes.

To recognize them and name them, and allow my relationship to them to shift.

To remember that they exist to shelter me, comfort me, protect me and care for me in some form.

To close doors that need closing. Revisit expectations that want attention. And to curl up and hide — or to spread out and take up space — in whatever way that I instinctively feel drawn to do.

That is what I’m doing now.

The Fluent Self