Home?

I recently attended a festival where a common greeting was "Welcome Home".  It was a festival I was at last year as well, and despite my familiarity with the location and some of the attendees I can't say it felt like home.  But to many of the people who attend, it did feel like home.  Or at least they were quite vociferous in asserting so.

This made me think a bit- what was I missing?  Why did some people look forward to this all year long?  Did they feel like home at home?  Or did they feel like a visitor in their normal life and a couple times a year they could spend time with a group of people where they feel they really fit in?  I can't say I arrived at any answers, but I pondered over the possibilities quite a bit.

Because life is funny, I was listening to a podcast the next week, the Michael Bane podcast, and he spoke about being home at the NRA convention.  So here was another person who felt at home in a large gathering of like minded people.  I've attended a number of events with very like minded people and I can't say I've ever really gotten that feeling.  Heck, I've been a volunteer for 5 or 6 years with an organization that has a lot of like minded people and I can't say at any event did I feel at home.  It was just a bunch of people doing stuff.

I have had the opportunity to attend the NRA convention on two occasions and I will say that at the first one at least, I felt a warm fuzzy similar to feeling at home.  I'm not often around people who have similar viewpoints as my own, the people I associate with the most range from communist leaning socialists to hardcore Democrats to people who are apathetic politically to flaming libertarians to hardcore Republicans and all the flavors in between.  Some of my very good friends own their own companies and do quite well, others struggle to find rent money and don't own their own car.

But at the NRA show, I found people of a similar makeup as myself.  People with good jobs who vote pro gun.  People who work hard and are passionate about civil rights.  People who can look at a gun and see beauty in the craftsmanship.  It was nice.

But in general I feel at home when I'm at home.  I guess that's good since I spend a lot of time here.  But other places where I know people feel at home have never struck me as that way.  Perhaps I'm just not the sort to get attached.  I could move next week and my new home would feel like home, I'm not attached to the location or layout of my current home.

I don't have a point, I guess, just rambling.  I hope that you have a place where you feel at home and get to visit it frequently.