Home // Thoughts triggered by Stardew Valley
In this latest stretch of the pandemic, I’ve taken to the weekend escape of Nintendo gaming. I’ve never been a gamer, but I suppose that’s only because I’ve been sold the wrong games. I’ve taken to the universe of Zelda, Mario, and Animal Crossing with the enthusiasm of a child, or perhaps more accurately, the spirit of an adolescent trapped in the body of an adult. I’m being unnecessarily unkind. In this new world, is it strange for one to want to disappear into magical otherworlds? In fact, even if we come out of this paralysing pandemic, isn’t it ok for people to indulge in whatever activity provides them comfort, as long as they aren’t harming anyone? So if I find comfort in my Nintendo Switch, then so be it, I say.
But it did get me thinking.
When faced with lightning, rain, and the wooliest of mammoths, the earliest humans receded into caves. They lined their mouths with torches and squatted, sharpening flint against flames. Within three walls they learnt to paint stories of their triumph over nature: their fears receding into the shadows. In the warmth of those torches, there was comfort.
Because they reminded them of the wombs in which they took life, the early humans chose caves with the softest walls. There they entered at twilight to be reborn at dawn. Behind our headsets and passwords, we're still prey, climbing, hiding, on our way to becoming apex predators.
Behind the accoutrements of the modern age, we still recede from our predators within the safety of home. Within four walls, we tell our stories, paint our pictures, recede. We shrink away from the outside – that’s where our predators lurk: shapeless, shadowy, ghosts of our own creation, moulded in our own image.
Like those early humans, we crawl out every morning – yawning, glassy-eyed, trepidatious – to greet the elements, and from the moment we step out, we can't wait to get home. At noon, as hunger preempts a socially acceptable lunch hour, we can't wait to get home. At three, as we shuffle through our pockets for loose change, we can't wait to get home. In our taxis, amidst our honking and our rushing and our manoeuvring past one another to get indoors, we can't wait to get home. Home is where the heart is, home is where we feel at home.
Home is a ghost of our own creation: the cave – its lowly ancestor – recreated from some lost memory we all share. Our predators are now nebulous, our prey has come to be served on china. Is it any surprise that our idea of home has become just as nebulous? Is it any wonder that home is no longer just somewhere to lay down our weapons, lick our wounds, share a quiet dinner with family and friends? Is it any wonder that in our search for a home, all we find is crockery?
Our appetites have grown insatiable. Nothing that exists without us can comfort us. No walls can shelter us, no roof can protect us. Home lies within us. It isn't three bedrooms, a dog, a staircase, a backyard, a loving family, carefully selected art, teaspoons, tablespoons, and chairs. It's an ideal. It's a time and a place, it's a figment of our imagination.
