I wrote the following article for a Christmas newsletter for homeschool students participating in Torrey Academy, the program I teach in. Though it was written with the yuletide season in mind and for the particular plight of homeschoolers, I think any reader will find its themes universally applicable!
Perhaps one of the most impossible tasks presenting itself to an enterprising homeschooled teenager is to love home. There is an old proverb—accurate as a statement of reality, poor as a piece of advice—that runs, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” What, I may ask, is more familiar than family? Yes, it is quite natural for young men and women to feel as if they live in a crowded subway with people perpetually pressing in around them. The 16 year-old, who has been homeschooled for 10 years, might even feel as if the literal walls of the house were closing in about them, imperceptibly but inevitably.
The danger of this feeling is that we might become like the pessimist described by G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy, who chastises his home not out of love, but for the sake of chastisement. The pessimist takes grim pleasure in pointing out the flaws in his environment, which is a slippery slope; he soon finds himself looking for flaws to feast on in gnawing dissatisfaction. This path leads to cold disillusionment.
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