For someone that travels a lot, it can cause one to be caught off-guard when realizations hit regarding "home" and what that means. For me, I've always been someone who loves to travel and who has moved so much within one locations or from one state to another (and even across the pond), that the idea of "home" is a little foreign sometimes. To a good number of people, the need and desire to find "home" and create a life with roots and friends and a network close by is not only wanted but extremely important. It creates in one a sense of life and purpose, a reason for existing everyday, and a community in which to interact. For me, growing up, that included a family all within a 15 mile radius, more or less, and that was sometimes rather suffocating. I love to travel and I love meeting new people and experiencing new places that being that "grounded" felt more like a prison sentence than an opportunity for growth. Yet, as of this weekend, I feel I have learned something new:
Every place is exactly the same
Now, what do I mean by that? Simply what it says, when all is said and done, every place is exactly the same. They all have grocery stores and places to see movies, they have restaurants and connecting roads from town to town. There is someone living there who loves it and someone who wants out, but, when all is said and done everything is the same. Some places might be more rural, some urban; some people may find the pace of one city too fast and another too slow, but the basics of every place are the same. You exist by making your day to day living, and what that day to day living entails is what ultimately matters. Some people can't stand the cold, others love the opportunity to take part in winter sports every year. Some people still want to feel alive by seeing the mountains, or need to have water so as to use their boat regularly. While these specifics are important and can determine ultimate happiness in a location, be wary of believing that the location alone is what will actually create happiness. It's not the locale that brings meaning to your life but what you do in that location.
Therefore, every place is the same. You still have to make something of your life no matter where you are, and if the atmosphere doesn't jive with what you like or what you do for a living, no matter how much you love where you are, that probably isn't the place for you. I love to travel, but I'm learning that I love the fast-paced nature of cities like Chicago, NYC, London. I love the warm weather and I abhor snow and cold, but the cities that give me the energy I need to feel alive and accomplished every day are ones where there inevitably will be snow, so I will just have to learn to deal. Maybe when the pace of my life can afford to slow down, or my friends and family all retire to Hawaii will I consider moving as well, but until then, I still have to go grocery shopping and buy clothes, take my car in for repairs and make coffee every morning, and I can do that in any location. It's a question of if I like my life and the people in it where I am at the moment, not if the location can make me do any of the above. The land will always be there, the people and the experiences that go along with it may not.
And for the semi-questioning still, just remember, there is always a plane to take if you ever need a quick vacation.
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