Housing in Harmony with YouOf our basic needs, nothing is more important than our shelter, our housing. Most people who die in the wilderness do so because they can’t regulate body temperature, meaning, that they cannot find or create shelter before they either freeze or overheat. It’s a basic need. We need it. We can’t compromise… And with the world being in such a chaotic state, perhaps we feel even more strongly the need to control the space we live in, our home. Yet, for many of us, the topic of home is filled with negative emotions… Many of us are plagued by massive debt that lasts decades. Thus our house and this basic need seems to virtually force us to remain in money-earning activities which may not be conducive to our soul’s happiness and spiritual growth. When I was growing up, I remember my parents talking about how you ‘can’t trust contractors’…and you need to ‘stay on them all the time’ to keep them working. ‘You have to supervise every nail driven and every tile laid if you want quality results’ they said. In some cases, friends of mine even had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen by dishonest contractors. Others, while building their home or suffering under the extreme pressure of financing it, even lost their most precious marital and partnership relations. Time is taken from children to work to pay for the house. So, my feelings were, like most people, fairly negative around housing. They consisted of fear, worry, stress, and feelings of endless work and responsibility. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Our home is an opportunity to create our individual space, fulfilling our needs just as we need. I began to think differently as I examined some of the contructions of non-mainstream architects, such as Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Then I read an article about a man who built his own dream house right into a hillside for only about 4,500 USD. Many of the materials were free and recycled. It only took him four months. And then I began to understand how a house isn’t just a building, built by disinterested contractors working for a paycheck. No. A home can by your fundamental artistic, creative, unique space. Take a look at these homes here, images taken from all over the world. Look at the beauty and utility of each, reflecting the creativity and joy of the creator, who very often will be living inside. Take a moment to consider what your perfect house would be like. Would it be a geodesic dome? Carved out of a Himalayan mountain cave? A treehouse in the jungle? What do you need and what kind of house do you want? Let’s reclaim our houses, our spaces, and our neighborhoods and communities. Hobbit House  |
