"Make Yourself at Home"

You know that awkward moment when you go visit a friend or family member's house to stay for a night or two, and they leave you with the phrase, "Make yourself at home," which leaves you with the awkward thought of, "Do they really want me to do that?"

There aren't a lot of places on this earth that I would feel comfortable sitting in my underwear, sprawled out on a couch dropping Oreo cookies into a glass of milk and eating them with a spoon while I watch Netflix. After all, I'm a 24-year-old male trying to live a professional lifestyle.

There is one place to do feel comfortable doing that though, and that place is home.

There's something about crossing the barrier of those four walls surrounding all my belongings and life that release the tension of caring what the world around you thinks about you. As soon as I come home and open the door, I can immediately start to relax. I don't worry about how I look, what I'm wearing, and if we're being honest, how I smell. Home is a place where comfort goes to new levels and safety feels almost guaranteed, and really, there's only one place you can feel that and that's at your own home.

There's a big difference between a friend telling me to make myself and home and me really feeling at home. Sure, a lot of it has to do with not being able to freely walk around half naked in someone else's house, but it also has a lot to do with feeling comfortable and secure, not just in the house, but in yourself. A home is a place where you feel completely okay being yourself- no masks, fronts or pretending to be someone else to impress someone. Walking into your home is like taking your shoes off after a long day of being on your feet; it's freedom.

Really, we all have a desire and a need for 'home.' We all want a place we feel protected, at peace and, more than anything, accepted and loved. The hard thing is knowing that not everyone has that kind of 'home' and knowing that even when people do, sometimes they try to make their home more about the things inside it rather than the things it represent. Not everyone has a place they can come to and feel safe and accepted, and not everyone can feel safe and accepted when they do have a place they call home; however, what can we do about it?

We can accept, protect and love others. 

Home isn't just a physical place; it's a feeling and a sense being truly loved for who we really are. It isn't a stationary structure; it's a gift we can carry with us wherever we go and share with others around us.

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: Inviting others into your home is inviting them into acceptance. 

Why Nostalgia Hurts

Every time I go home, I get this really weird feeling. It's called nostalgia. ​

It's all over the walls in the pictures, it's in the home movies in the cabinets and its in every room in the memories. Honestly, I'm not a fan. 

Nostaligia kinda hurts. It can be full of people who have come and gone in your life, full of regret or what ifs and full of old memories that have come and gone. It's difficult to handle in big doses, and personally, can seem unhealthy at times. ​

For me, when I experience too much nostalgia, it physically makes me sick. It puts my stomach in knots and makes my mind race. It's like an adventure back to old relationships, friendships and family members that are no longer in my life making me wonder what happened to everyone and everything. People move on, in this life and the next, and it's just super weird to think about. I'm now old enough to mourn over things I used to be to young to mourn, and sometimes just seems to hit all at once. 

I'm not sure why nostalgia is a thing or what it's purpose is within the human emotional palet, but maybe it is for the whole mourning and learning from the past. It hurts, but it's good. I think it's good to be able to mourn and reflect on things past that maybe you were once too young to understand. Maybe it's good to have some nostalgia, even though I think it sucks sometimes. ​

Nostalgia can hurt, but it can also helps, and I'm thankful that when its hardest at home, I am at home with the people I love most. ​

-Cliff​

Cliff's Note: Nostalgia, embrace it. ​

When Your Hometown Doesn't Feel Like Home Anymore

It's funny how your hometown can cease to feel like your hometown after you've been gone from it for a few years. The question, "Where are you from?" becomes a confusing answer because you may be from such and such town, but that town doesn't feel like where you're from anymore. Your hometown just turns into the town you were born in, the town you were raised in or the town where your parents still live.  

The people have changed and aged, your old friends you grew up with and made memories with have moved away and the restraunts have changed, with your old favorites going out of business and new popular chain restraunts taking their place. The street names can seem to be the only similarity. 

Something funny happens when your hometown doesn't feel like home anymore. It turns from being a town you make memories in into a town that's just full of memories made. Driving down the streets turns into a tour of nostalgia accompanied by a sense of not quite belonging anymore. It's strange. 

Your hometown can become a place of the past and an easy place to look back at where mistakes were made and what could have been done differently; however, when your hometown does become this and becomes a place that doesn't feel like home anymore, it can become a place full of measurement of personal growth. It can become a place of looking at who you once were and who you are now. 

Measuring personal growth is important, as it can reveal both positive and negative changes. Going back to where you were born and raised is a great place to do this because it's a place stacked with who you were. It's a place full of old stomping grounds, and around every corner is a memory and thought of who you used to be and how you used to think. It reveals how you've grown and how you once grew and need to grow again, and there's nothing like a reminder from where you came from. 

Although your hometown may change, so will you. Although your hometown may not feel like home anymore, it always will be, and there's always something to learn from home. When you go home, don't just notice the changes in it, notice the changes in you. 

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: When you go home, don't just notice the changes within it, but notice the changes within you.  

Why Oklahomans Know How to do 'Homecomings'

Sometimes, you have to leave home in order to realize why you love it.

Leaving home is part of growing up, whether it's moving halfway across the state or halfway across the world, and sometimes when you've lived at "home" your whole life, it's easy to take advantage of the things that make it just that - home.

Growing up in small-town, southern Oklahoma, it was easy to take advantage of home. It was easy to take advantage of the acres of flat land, the friendly, easy-going nature of everyone and the gallons of sweet tea available at every store in town (sadly, not all places have back country roads you can drive trucks down or hunting and fishing available in the back yard). It was easy to take advantage of moving on to college at Oklahoma State University and calling Stillwater, Oklahoma home, another small town. There are certain things about these small towns that you can't find anywhere else, and that's what makes them special.

These are the places where the world slows down and the places that remind you of your roots.
These are the places you have to come back to in order to realize why you loved them so much.
These are the places that welcome you back after a long journey like you just left yesterday.
And these are the places where coming home is welcomed back with celebration.

This weekend marks the highlight of America's Greatest Homecoming Celebration at OSU. It's a time where hundreds of thousands of OSU alumni come back to Stillwater from all over the world to see their Alma Mater. For some, it may have only been one year since they've been back, and for others, it may have been 50 years. It's a time when graduates who have moved around the world to bigger cities and bigger jobs have a chance to come home and see friends and family. It's a time when they can come back and see the things that have changed and the things that have stayed the same.

Oklahomans know how to do homecomings because they know what makes home, "home." After all, it's in the name of the state. Oklahomans know that it's the people, the memories and the small things in life that make home. It's being able to come back to a place you may not have been in years and feel like you never left, and it's being able to come back to a family. OSU's homecoming celebration is just a symbol and small part of the 'homecomings' that happen across Oklahoma each and every day, from college students coming home to visit mom and dad to men and women returning from lifelong journeys. I'm proud to be able to call Oklahoma my home, and I'm glad I get to be a part of some of the best homecomings in the country. I can't wait to be back.

-Cliff

-Cliff's Note: Sometimes, you have to leave home in order to realize why you love it.