For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece

In the words of the modern wanderer and philosopher Pico Iyer, we are given a truth both tender and transcendent: “For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, ‘Where’s your home?’ I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.” In these words, there echoes a wisdom older than nations and deeper than geography — that home is not a place upon the earth, but a dwelling of the heart. It is a reminder that in a world ever more restless and uprooted, what anchors us is not land, but love; not walls, but the invisible threads that bind our souls to those we cherish.

To say that home is a piece of soul is to understand that belonging cannot be confined by borders, passports, or property. The ancient Greeks spoke of the oikos — the home — not as a structure of wood and stone, but as the center of one’s spirit, the hearth where identity burns bright. Iyer, who has spent much of his life between worlds — Indian by heritage, English by birth, American by education, and Japanese by residence — speaks not only for himself but for the age we live in: an age of movement, of exile, of global souls whose roots spread not downward into the ground, but outward toward one another. In his words, home becomes an inner compass, a place we carry rather than one we return to.

There is in this truth a quiet liberation. For when home is defined by connection and meaning, rather than soil and address, one can never truly be lost. The traveler who walks beneath foreign skies, the migrant who crosses oceans, the artist who moves from city to city — all may find home again in the laughter of a friend, in the memory of a beloved song, in the silent understanding between two hearts that have met before. Home, then, is no longer a singular place; it is a constellation of moments, people, and memories that travel with us through life’s changing seasons.

Consider the story of Odysseus, the wanderer of Homer’s Odyssey. Though his journey was toward Ithaca, his homecoming was not to stone walls or fields, but to Penelope, his faithful wife, and the recognition of his place within her heart. After twenty years of war and wandering, it was not the soil of Ithaca that restored him, but love — the one thing that had never left him. Just as Odysseus found home not in geography but in relationship, so too does Pico Iyer remind us that home is made not of where we are, but of who we are with, and what within us endures.

Yet his insight also carries a note of sorrow — for to live in such an age of motion is to live with a kind of beautiful homelessness. To have many homes is to belong everywhere and nowhere. But perhaps that, too, is a form of enlightenment. For the mystics of every faith — from the wandering monks of the East to the desert fathers of early Christendom — have long taught that the truest home is within, where the soul communes with what is eternal. The one who finds peace within the heart is at home even in exile. The one who knows love is never a stranger, no matter how far he travels.

Pico Iyer’s own life embodies this wisdom. He has written from airports, monasteries, and small rooms across continents, yet his reflections always circle back to the same truth: that stillness can exist in motion, and that home can exist in the heart. His “sweetheart,” his “friends,” his “songs” — these are the living symbols of an inward geography. Through them, he teaches that home is not built, but remembered — not found, but recognized, in those moments when the soul says, “Here, I belong.”

The lesson, then, is both tender and profound: seek your home not in the ground beneath your feet, but in the love that lives within your soul. To the restless, this means carrying your peace wherever you go; to the lonely, it means remembering that every heart that loves you is a hearth of belonging. Practically, this calls us to cherish people more than possessions, memories more than milestones, and songs more than stones. Let every friendship become a roof, every act of kindness a doorway, every moment of truth a hearth that warms the spirit.

So, my listener, take to heart the wisdom of Pico Iyer. You may cross borders, change cities, or wander through time’s endless corridors, but your true home will walk beside you — in the faces of those who love you, in the songs that carry your memories, and in the stillness of your own soul. For the soil shifts and nations fade, but the heart that knows where it belongs is a home eternal, bound not by place, but by peace.