Don’t get me wrong. Moving is hard. I crave stability for my children, and I want them to feel loved wherever they are. However, as life would have it, I have moved eighteen times since leaving home at age eighteen. All of my worldly possessions have fit inside a pickup truck, and we’ve had corporate moves in an eighteen wheeler. Either way, when you spend thirteen years in the military and then join a mobile job market, moving is not always a choice. Here are some things that I have learned along the way.
Life is a series of tradeoffs.
In a nutshell, you can’t have it all. Affordable housing, abundant jobs, no traffic, excellent public schools, convenient shopping and full amenities—pick two, maybe three. However, all of these things do not exist in one place.
Living in a big city is exciting, and there are unlimited amenities and cultural resources, such as museums, plays, and parks. Restaurants are abundant, and there is never a shortage of things to do. But housing is expensive, and traffic can be unbearable. There are expectations that one will stay in the office well into the evening hours, with barely a nod to family dinners and bedtime routines for kids. However, living in a smaller city or town can be an adjustment, too. Traffic is manageable and family life is culturally encouraged, but the weekends and summers are slower with fewer options for entertainment and enrichment. Women are viewed differently. Life is a series of trade offs.
When you live in San Francisco, you crave cheaper housing. When you move out to the suburbs, you miss walking to your favorite restaurants. When you move to the middle of the country, you love the pace but you miss the beach. There is no perfect place to live. So perhaps we should not spend too much time and energy dreaming of greener pastures. The truth is, there’s a little bit of green and a little bit of yellowing grass in every pasture. And if you ask me, you can put up with a lot anywhere when you are sharing life with people you love and appreciate (the military is brilliant at cultivating this shared purpose.) Thus, when people ask me, “Which do you like better? Boston or Oklahoma? New York City or California? Florida or North Carolina?” My answer is simple. 1) I like the places where I felt deep connections to people. 2) Each place has value; they are just different.
Moving helps you better define “home.”
When you have moved a lot, you realize that home is wherever your friends and family are—home is not necessarily defined by a house or street address. Home isn’t defined by government jurisdiction or political views. Moving helps clarify this point, as you learn that you can make a home anywhere. I learned this spending major holidays on an aircraft carrier, or at “home” eating Thanksgiving dinner far from my hometown with friends (who were like family.)
Moving helps you understand our need to belong.
In any given place, there are two kinds of people—natives and transplants (insiders and outsiders.) The natives were born and raised in one place, and they know everything about that place. They perfected the local system, and they are the system. Transplants have less attachment to these systems. In larger cities or communities where every other person is a transplant, this is not such a big deal. In smaller communities, you can really become aware of what it feels like to be in the outer circle. This need to belong is profound, and it holds true across the generations, whether your child has moved to a new school or your grandmother is adjusting to a nursing home.
When you have been in one place for a long time, you may not even notice these subtleties. However, moving has made me much more empathetic to this cause, and makes me want to help everyone feel like an insider. Showing up brand new somewhere can make you feel really insecure and vulnerable. When I see a family who looks new or different, or if someone is standing alone nearby, I want to say hi and let them know that they are important. They are insiders with me.
Everyone has a need to belong, and I have moved around enough to know that the barriers we put up and the pecking orders that people try to establish just do not matter. We are all human beings worthy of love and belonging, regardless of where we came from.
Moving helps you to be more creative.
Every new idea is pretty much a reworking or recombination of a previous idea. New inventions, songs, or pieces of art are likely to be inspired by something that already exists. Therefore, you would assume that the more places and ideas that you are exposed to, the more material that you have to springboard and come up with new ideas, or different ways of looking at things. Moving and travel have definitely helped me to be more insightful by just looking at the world in different ways.
You put less stock in material things.
When you move on to a ship, off a ship, and on a ship again, you learn that your material things are only so important. The same has occurred as we have packed up the family for various job opportunities. Paring down is a constant process, and we still have way too much stuff!
Nevertheless, when you have to move that stuff, you think differently about it. You question it. You clean it. You assess whether it is still working or not. This is a healthy practice, as living in one place for a really long time can help us amass an exorbitant amount of stuff.
The tradeoffs of moving.
Not everything about picking up your life and transferring it to another place is glamorous. First of all, moving is stressful. It can also be lonely, as you struggle to grow roots before picking up and moving on to the next place. Consistency is important, especially with kids.
Those who move frequently may also find it more difficult to be content in life. This can be a good thing (Are you constantly striving to be better?), or it can also be unhelpful (If you are always dreaming of another place, it can be difficult to enjoy the moment you are in. Remember those elusive greener pastures?) Moving as a family also complicates matters, as one place may be great for some family members but not others. As with everything in life, there are positives and not-so-positives with moving.
Love your neighbor first. Try to appreciate our differences.
Overall, I wouldn’t trade my experiences moving for anything, despite the inconvenience, adjustments, and even loneliness. My empathy spectrum is wide, and I have a heart for all kinds of people in lots of different places with different perspectives. I appreciate urbanites loving the excitement and thrill of their cities, and I appreciate those in rural America preferring a simpler life. Thanks to moves from red states to blue states to purple states, I see why Democrats might see the world as they do, and Republicans the same.
See, being a geographic mutt isn’t so bad (although just mentioning politics in a post has already made me sweat.) Perhaps we should talk about how much I love the food from all of the places I’ve lived? Hmmm. Shall we start with lobster, fried chicken, or steak?
Are you considering a move? Have you moved a lot?