Simplicity is a key and rampant value in these times, according to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. I don’t know if "simplicity" really ever went away when it comes to such things as parenting, or what a home gives back to those who live in it.

I am someone who has always felt, viscerally, that as a father I should show my children that we are connected at the heart level, expressed through word and touch. My two young children hear my voice and feel my touch as they move off to sleep, and they engage with that too as they wake up. I spend a little time in the morning with them in their rooms, bringing them to ground as they emerge from their sleep, in the belief that it will help set the context for their day and their interaction with their world.

I will also admit that my morning time with my children helps ground me to my own day and world. There is nothing simpler than the timbre of the voice and the touch of a hand. If this is what all of the various types of research are showing us, then we are moving to a place where it is dawning on us once more that trust is really about trusting ourselves.

And so we can welcome all the new theories that lead us toward a deeper understanding of some very fundamental truths: We search for connection and engagement in ways that help us move thoughts and ideas into practical reality. We do it through our connection to other people, principally our loved ones and friends, and we create containment for that feeling, in the physical sense, in the creation of what we call "home."

Like aboriginals, so beautifully described by Bruce Chatwin in his novel The Songlines, we dream our future and then seek to make it a reality by walking it. It may be that in an era of sustainability and environmentalism, we will discover that the most sustainable and environmental thing we can do as human beings is have a relationship of meaning with ourselves and those around us.

And perhaps the place to start the journey and discovery—the growing and the nomading—toward a sense of greater depth is in our new understanding of the meaning of home.

[Main Image: iphotostock.com]