House vs Home

House - n. a building for people to live in usually for one family.
Home- n. the house or flat/apartment that you live in, especially with your family.

What are the definitions of these words for you?

With the above-mentioned definitions from Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, you cannot blame a person for easily interchanging these synonymous words. Their meanings are connected like chains. Like a son that can never come out of the shadows of his father and a rose that will always make you think of red.

I came to one class that day having the same understanding. Why will you make something simple a complicated one? Why choose to think of hard differences rather than the handy similarities? These questions make it easy to decide on matters similar with what this blog post ought to talk about.

From that class, I was able to formulate an opinion on where the distinction of these words lies. Both house and home connote a place where people live in but one comes closer to the essence of relationships, especially the family. You can always own or build a house but you may still not consider it as your home without the person/ people (or a thing in some cases) who/ that makes you feel happy, safe and complete. A place where you can see yourself grow, love and live a peaceful life.

July 17 is a sunny, typical Tuesday for the people of Bakersfield, CA. While some are still on their way to their various destinations, Mike, a high school student, arrived home that day at an unbelievable time of 9:25AM, when he's still supposedly sitting on Mrs. Jones' Values Education class.

Thirty minutes earlier, his busy father, Viktor, got a call from a number that's not registered on his phonebook.



A project manager in a construction company, he was currently having a heated argument with a contractor immediately before his phone rang. His temper was currently on the edge that time and the message that he received left it hanging as he was summoned to the principal’s office to talk about the cause of Mike's 'earlier class dismissal.' He later found out that Mike had a fight with one of his classmates because the latter mocked about his mother, Julie, while they were talking about the role of mothers in a family.

It was a childish fight indeed but, nonetheless, it underscored the reality that Julie and Viktor got divorced just 2 months ago and since then, Victor wasn't considering their house a home. Inside the four walls of that dwelling, he was and will still be alone.

How about you? Where are you living right now? Do you call it a home or a house?