Do you remember the way you feel when you start approaching your home after a long vacation? Yes, you are on the right track. You feel comfortable, secure and a sense of belongingness whenever you arrive in your neighborhood. Especially when you have been away for a significant amount of time.
Your neighborhood also makes you feel confident. You can navigate within its area fearlessly and are acclimatized to most of its characteristics. Just to remind, buildings are not the only elements of our surroundings. Along with them other elements like open spaces, gardens, parks, street furniture, shops, landscapes, trees even people and their activities comprise our neighborhood. All these get registered in our minds knowingly or unknowingly. For Example, if you go for an evening walk in the garden near your house every day, you might observe a few things and get accustomed to it so much that it becomes habitual. Say, everyday n you way back is the time when street lights turn on.
You might not notice such things on purpose, but they get registered in your mind. And if any of those events fail to occur even once, then you instantly become aware of the change and there is a feeling of discomfort or surprise. Same goes for a situation or a scenario that gets added to the neighborhood. You may take time to adapt to it. But once it becomes habitual, it follows the same track as before. Example, there is a new statue in an open space near you. You might like it or dislike it but for a couple times you would be caught by surprise when you say pass by or happen to look at the space. Gradually you get accustomed to it.
Similarly, when you move to a new place, your surroundings change. If you move cities or countries, it is a different experience than moving intercity or interstate for that matter. Since not many things match to the set of registered things, you tend to feel discomfort, lonely, lost or even afraid while navigating in the surroundings. The greater number of disparities within the two neighborhoods, the more time it would take for you to settle in the new one.
This is how our surroundings communicate with us and they go beyond that. They shape us, our lifestyles, our approach, or the way we respond to situations. The number of open and breathable spaces in our neighborhood adds more nature in our lives thus promoting a healthier lifestyle. The more advanced facilities within our reach means we have a fast pace of life. Extroverted surroundings mean a possibility that most of us know each other and vice-versa. A calm, clean and less chaotic area means a possibility of a more peaceful state of mind and so on.
Our surroundings not only communicate with us, but they do shape us, so let us try to understand their language and what they have to say!
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