My son moved to a new house - not new in the sense of just being built but a house new to him and his wife.
After they had moved all of their furniture and belongings inside and straightened things out a little I sat in their living room and immediately felt comfortable. I thought, "This is a good house filled with happiness."
I remember reading Tennyson when he wrote:
As walls have ears."
That's sort of true. Houses and buildings somehow absorb attitudes and perhaps temperaments of the people who have lived there previously. If the last tenants were full of family love this permeates the atmosphere. The opposite is true as well. If there has been hate and ill feeling these vibrations linger and can be felt by the new owners.
All buildings have a mood. I love visiting churches and places of worship wherever I travel in the world - even though I don't belong to any organised religion. Lots of churches give an instant feeling of peace and tranquility.
Other buildings give off different vibes. Obvious ones are places such as airports, where everything seems to be hustle, bustle and confusion. A doctors surgery may give off anxiety, restaurants a sense of expectations and so on.
Some people say they see ghosts in their houses or in other buildings who repeat the same thing. These apparitions walk down the same stairs, in the same way or across a room in a certain direction over and over again. Some strong emotion has imprinted this into the house.It's interesting (or maybe worrying!) to consider what the walls of our own houses are taking in as they observe our moods, tone of our voices, thoughts and so on.
Shelly said, "One wandering thought pollutes the day." As well as polluting our minds perhaps these thoughts also pollute our living areas.
Wonder how people feel when they walk into our homes?
Hi Mike. Very interesting... but I get it. My family always loved the beach; everything about the environment. So when I inherited my childhood home my first thought when I entered the house was the ocean. Remnants of good thoughts pervade the thinking and feeling. It didn't hurt to find a stash of sea shells in the basement. So the theme of my rather "country" home is the beach and ocean. I liked this post.
ReplyDeleteAgree buildings contain "atmospheres". I have felt them most strongly in places where awful things have happened (former mental asylums,prisons turned into museums, the revolutionary tribunal in Paris, a squat for drug addicts) and am convinced the desperation and unhappiness of the people in those places are imprinted in the buildings. I felt physically awful when I visited those places.
ReplyDeleteHappy places seem to leave a weaker imprint but it is very uplifting when it is felt and I have sometimes smelt flowers even when there were none around.
I think happy places leave just as strong an atmosphere, if not stronger, than unhappy places. Misery isn't stronger that happiness - unless there are more people feeling that way! Great post.
ReplyDeleteWhile househunting, I think most people have an idea of what they'd like but often end up with something completely different, purely because a property "spoke" to them. Happy homes certainly exude an atmosphere that can't be explained away.
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