It’s the season when so many people are closing on their new homes, painting, and then moving in before the school year. But after searching for months, signing a contract, and then the craziness of the closing process, you might not only invest most of your savings. You might also forget why you did this in the first place.

How is this possible? I’ll tell you when I realized it had happened to me.

Down To Georgia

More than a decade ago, my wife, kids and I were scheduled to leave New York and fly to Savannah, Georgia to join my side of the family for Thanksgiving. But as often happens with preschool children, our younger daughter got an ear infection the day before the trip. So she and my wife stayed home instead. 

By 9 pm that Wednesday evening, my older daughter had settled into her cot for bedtime. I was staring at the outline of a fake plant in the corner of a dark hotel room. I could not turn on a light or a television while she slept—not if I wanted her to stay asleep, anyway. And with an only slightly milder version of the cold that sidelined my daughter, I felt pretty lousy myself. I actually should have been the one to stay back with her, but the pull of obligation had been too strong. 

I went into the bathroom to check in with my wife and quietly say good night. As I walked in, I looked in the mirror. Maybe it was the silence, where all I heard was my daughter’s breathing. Maybe it was the cold medicine I had taken or FOMO, since everyone else was together downstairs at the bar. Or it was just me hitting bottom. I was overwhelmed with a profound loneliness and a sadness deeper than I had ever remembered feeling. Along with it came a sudden awareness. I don’t want to be here anymore. I just want to be home. 

I flashed back to being eight years old, right after my parents separated, shuttling between the only house I had ever known and my father’s newly-rented one-bedroom apartment. I again felt the suffocating, looming dread of those evenings when my brother and I would squeeze our clothes into a green faux-leather suitcase and stuff our toys into a little canvas zip-up bag. I could count on whoever was picking us up to be punctual. But my life was otherwise unsettled, even as the multi-day back and forth became a once-a-week transition. Then I thought of the half a decade in my 20s, when I slept in much scabbier hotel rooms than the one I was in while on tour after tour with my band. I loved meeting all of those people and performing for them. But through all that traveling, I had also recreated many of the worst elements of my childhood. 

All I had ever wanted was somewhere I didn’t have to leave as soon as I had arrived. And I already had one: My home. We had just closed on it a year earlier, and then had spent more than half a year renovating it! The thoughts ran through my head: Why was I still traveling for Thanksgiving, when I could be there now? I could celebrate this holiday not in a hotel, but in my dining room. You know what? I get to celebrate anytime I want. The full weight of this realization hit me. For the first time in my life, I knew what home was for me—a space to gather everyone and help them feel welcome. This insight changed how I engaged with the world. It transformed my business into what it is today. 

What does home mean to you? If you aren’t sure yet, you now have a place, the best place, in which to search for the answer. I’ve been fortunate to get to ask this question to my clients. Their responses go to the heart of what animates us, gives us hope, courage, spirit and purpose. So will yours. Home is a story, a person, an idea, a feeling, or some combination of them all. Your unique answer is the most valuable guide you possess. It’s what got you here. 

It’s an answer you’ll want to hold close. Don’t forget it like I did.