What is a custom home? Why build a custom home?
It seems like these should be easy questions for a designer to answer but they’re trickier than they first appear. So it is with all simple but profound questions. One of the sentences that has changed my life was spoken by Albert Einstein. He once said, “If you can’t explain it to a six year old you don’t understand it yourself.” I’ve returned to that thought again and again to measure my supposed wisdom and expertise against it, and I don’t mind telling you I often fall short. For instance, ask an architects what the meaning and purpose of architecture is and then watching perhaps most of them fumble around with a long awkward explanation. It’s illustrative, but I don’t laugh too hard because it happens to us all.
So I regularly check myself. I ask myself the most basic questions. Like, “Why do we design custom homes?”
And hear’s the answer … I want your home to be a custom home because a custom home is a tool for building yourself a truly beautiful life.
A custom home challenges us like Socrates to “Know thyself.” It demands from us a level of self-knowledge—the first step on the path toward true happiness.
The second step toward true happiness is mastery—the effective extension of who you are and who you are becoming into the world.
Mastery is all about seamlessly extending ourselves outward. Whether you’re swinging a hammer or driving a car or practicing your backhand we describe it all the same way. In sports we’ll say things like, “Let the club become a natural extension of your body.” If you happen to be on the radio then it’s the microphone. You know when I first started doing this five years ago the biggest distraction to sharing my thoughts with you was this big black thing in front of my face. Now, I don’t even notice that it’s there. And the same holds equally true for whatever you hold—a tennis racket, a bat, a paint brush, a whisk, a hammer, a saw, a camera, a pen, a relationship, and yes, a home. A custom home fits perfectly in your hand.
In the best of worlds we surround ourselves with a life that is authentically and organically a natural extension of who we are. A life so seamless and effortlessly responsive to the rhythms of our mind and body and emotions that we lose track of where we end and it begins.
That’s how it is with me and our humble home. That’s how it is with my relationship with Tina. Most days I’m not sure where I end and she begins. We just flow. That’s what it is to build a custom home around a custom life. That is the second step toward happiness—mastery—but there is another.
The first step is to know thyself. The second is to get busy designing a life so natural to you that you are tempted to take it for granted. The final step is don’t take it for granted.
Without gratitude you will sit in your castle but not find any pleasure in it. I see it all the time. Gratitude is perhaps the hardest of the three steps but without it there is no payoff for all the other work.
Know yourself, own your life, and count your blessings. Demand authenticity, pursue mastery, and practice gratitude. In my opinion, therein lies your best shot at happiness. And therein lies the meaning and purpose for creating a custom home. Because we all have to live somewhere, and as our dwelling becomes a home it means we’re getting to know ourselves, we’re beginning
to master and extend ourselves, and in gratitude for whatever we’ve been given, we’re beginning to build ourselves a beautiful life.
