Having cleared some confusions of "home" with fixed
resi-dence and place of birth and having seen that home may be a struc-ture of
several single level homes (on different and identical levels) which may change
in time, it is time to attempt a more positive analysis of home. In "home
is where the heart is;" "at the turn of the century Vienna is my real
home;" and "my marriage was a home-coming," "home" is
marked by an emotional attachment: to a place, a person, an intellectual
environment, etc. "I am at home in Prague, reading Patocka, listening to a
Mahler symphony, with my love in my arms," as well as the sentences
identifying the homes of Socrates, the British monarch and Franz Kafka
stress the strong relation between personal identity and home (as Havel claimed
in the above quotations). Home is where we could or can be ourselves, feel at
ease, secure, able to express ourselves freely and fully, whether we have
actually been there or not. Home is the reflection of our subjectivity in the
world. Home is the environment that allows us to fulfil our unique selves
through interaction with the world. Home is the environment that allows us to be
ourselves, allows us to be homely. Since in a home environment we can express
our true iden-tity, home is the source of home truth. Home may be an emotional
environment, a culture, a geographical location, a political system, a
historical time and place, etc., and a combination of all the above.