A relative asked me that.
We were at our place. It was not hostile. We were discussing something else and he wanted to make a rhetorical point.
“Isn’t it just for sleep?” he said.
If that were true, my wandering decade should have been bliss.
I have slept in many places.
Rooms rented short term.
Cubicles that were technically legal but emotionally temporary.
Landed houses that were not mine.
Condos that felt like transit lounges.
Sleep was never the problem.
Peace was.
A place is not just shelter. It is not just four walls and a bed.
It is an anchor.
When you do not have an anchor, you float.
Floating sounds romantic until you realize you are also drifting. You do not control direction. You respond to currents.
I was born in a grand mansion.
It was never ours.
Borrowed status. Borrowed space. Borrowed stability.
Later, I lived with my family in a rented one-room flat.
Small.
Constrained.
But for that season, it was ours. The walls held memory, not performance.
I once had a place of my own.
I gave it away so my children could live peacefully.
Then came the decade of movement.
When you live in transit long enough, something subtle changes.
You stop buying furniture that cannot be disassembled.
You stop forming habits tied to a location.
You stop placing books on shelves.
You live lightly.
Light is efficient.
Light is also rootless.
People confuse mobility with freedom.
Sometimes it is.
Often it is instability dressed up as flexibility.
Now we have a place of our own again.
In three years, there will be another apartment.
Fully paid.
No mortgage hanging over our head.
No bank shaping my risk tolerance. No silent calculation in the background of every decision.
This is not about pride.
It is about cognitive load.
Debt occupies mental bandwidth.
Even manageable debt hums in the background.
Remove that hum and something shifts.
Decisions become cleaner.
You choose work because it is aligned, not because it services a monthly obligation.
So why do we have a place to stay?
Not just to sleep.
Not just to store things.
Not just to signal success.
We have a place to stay for peacefulness.
Peacefulness is not luxury. It is structural.
It is the ability to sit in your own living room and not feel temporary.
It is knowing the walls will still be there next year.
It is planning five years ahead without calculating exit clauses.
It is an anchor.
An anchor does not stop you from sailing. It gives you a fixed point when you need it.
For a long time, I lived without one.
Now I have it.
And that changes everything.