The wonder of moving

At least once in your life, move somewhere new. Pack your belongings into boxes, get on an airplane or in a car, and move to where everything is unknown, including the people, the air, the talk between neighbors, and what people do for fun. Move to where you don’t know the weather, the schools, the grocery stores, or the best food.Move to where you get lost on the regular to understand your place and who you are in the world.I am from Buffalo, New York, a Rust Belt city on the Great Lakes. I know how to navigate 3 feet of lake-effect snow and ice, and drive through blizzards like it’s nothing. I grew up eating pizza and wings, beef on weck, Sahlen’s hot dogs, and an endless supply of cereal from my grandfather, who worked a lifetime at the General Mills factory downtown. (The city smells like Cheerios on an average day.) As a child, I got booted out of the house on winter mornings to shovel the driveway with my three brothers. We would refuel on hot chocolate and then slip our snow pants, boots, and mittens back on to make snow angels, go sledding, and ice-skate on the rink my dad built in the backyard. I am also a woman who, in her late 30s, left home. I left the snow, the food, and, hardest of all, my people. Author Jack Kerouac describes the sensation of leaving in his novel “On the Road”:“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”For me, that next “crazy venture” was south – really south. Huntsville, Alabama, south. So south the sun shines most days of the year, and people talk, and move, slowly like taffy pulled between your fingers. So south that the occasional storm will spin in a vortex so strong that it can flatten houses and trees. So south that there is sweet tea and biscuits everywhere, cotton still growing on the outskirts of town, and mansions with columns and big porches where people long ago made their money from that aforementioned puffy white plant. The vestiges of slavery are never far. Today, people make money in these parts by working on rockets that go to the moon. Once you move and tear away the threads that have held together the fabric of your identity, you might find, as I did, that you like other things. It turns out, I quite like the sunshine. You might find that you enjoy not having to ask “Are the roads dry?” every time you leave the house six months out of the year. You might find that you enjoy being able to get on your bicycle and go riding with your daughter Sunday evenings, because the weather’s reliably, sometimes uncannily, nice. You might find that other people live easier lives, and always have, and that you just didn’t know how smooth and pleasant life could be in other places.Who knew?You might find that your husband has new energy once he’s not breathing sharp, frigid air, and that you feel more peaceful in a warmer climate. You also might find that the mountains, once you get over your fear of driving on them, make you feel safe. They are big, and you are small, and there’s an immutable comfort in this fact.You might find space opening inside you that you didn’t know existed.Last of all, you might find the cold-weather grit that runs through you doesn’t melt away just because you left one geographic region for another. It remains intact, carrying you forward from one challenge to the next. It is the way of the Northeasterner, wherever she lands. We clear the driveway one shovel at a time, and then we help our neighbor. Pick somewhere on the map and move, even if it’s just one time. Even if you’re scared. You will still be you wherever you go.You might hate it and move back. But consider this: Deepen your worldviewwith Monitor Highlights.Politics with respectGet political stories with respectful analysis.There‘s a world of new ideas in everyBooks newsletter.There‘s more to life, enrich yours withCulture & Learning weekly.Follow humanity‘s discoveries withScience & Nature stories in your inbox.Gain a spiritual perspectivefrom the stories in your inbox.Want to understand the deeper impact of critical events? Learn the Monitor‘s insight.Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads. There’s also the possibility you might love it. ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LoginReal news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.The Christian Science Monitor was founded in 1908 to lift the standard of journalism and uplift humanity. We aim to “speak the truth in love.” Our goal is not to tell you what to think, but to give you the essential knowledge and understanding to come to your own intelligent conclusions. Join us in this mission by subscribing.