Home Is Where the Red Phone Is

Home Is Where the Red Phone Is I don’t enjoy traveling as much as some people. Unless I’m touring (which I’m doing at the time of this writing, and which I enjoy because the people are amazing) I tend to avoid extensive travel, opting instead to stay in my home town most of the time. All my clothes likely fit in a single suitcase, but I don’t enjoy living out of a suitcase. I find value in traversing the globe, in discovering new cultures, in learning more about myself in the processâ€"but I truly enjoy living in a home, a place I can call my own. The problem with homes, however, is once we establish a long-term dwelling, it’s easy to accumulate a bunch of junk we don’t need. I built my first house when I was 22â€"a feat that seems ridiculous nowâ€"but its size was even more ridiculous: it contained three bedrooms, even though only my former spouse and I lived there; it had a huge basement, which was a great place to hide last month’s discarded new possessions; it featured not only a gigantic living room, but also an “entertainment room”â€"which is just a fancy way to say, “room with a too-large TV and expensive surround-sound system.” We think we must fill all our spaceâ€"we must cram every corner nook and hidden cranny with supposed adornments. We believe if a room is nearly empty it is underutilized. So we buy stuffâ€"silly stock paintings, decorative thingies, and IKEA furnitureâ€"to fill the void. What we’re doing is attempting to establish the place in which we live as our home, an extension of ourselves. And so the logic goes: the more I buy, the more this place is my home. The problem with this line of thinking is it’s circuitous. Your home is your home for one reason: you call it your home. The stuff doesn’t make it your homeâ€"you do. If you need a reminder, do what I do: find one thing, something unique, and display it somewhere prominent. For me, it’s a red phoneâ€"a relic from my twelve years in the telecom industry. It’s a simple, beautiful design that stands out (the same phone is in the Museum of Modern Art), and whenever I see it, I know I’m home. For you, your red phone could be a one-of-a-kind painting, a photograph, a child’s framed drawing. When you have a single reminder of home, everything else begins to look superfluousâ€"even silly. What is your red phone? Read this essay and 150 others in our new book, Essential.