The Lost Art of Staying Put
Did you know that the average american can expect to move 11.7 times before he or she dies? Of course, that was in 2016 before the horribleness that was 2020 so who knows how that average number may have been affected.
In my own 35 years, I’ve moved around eight times. I’ll be moving to another location here in the very near future so you might as well mark me down for nine. That’s only 2.7 more moves until I’ve hit that average. In all but one move, it was a matter of necessity and not because I was searching for a “geographic cure”. In her book, “This is Where You Belong”, Melody Warnick describes geographic cure as this:
“I believed so thoroughly in the healing power of geography - what a friend called “the geographic cure” - that I didn’t bother to make plans for how these changes would occur. By stirring up the better angles of my nature, the right place would simply complete me.”
That was Warnick’s way of thinking. Things changed though when she still wasn’t happy with her latest move to Blacksburg, Virginia.
“My family’s average stay in any city to that point was 3.2 years. I was starting to lose confidence in our ability to live anywhere for long,” she said.
I was born in Mishawaka and spent about 18 years living in North Liberty. Like Warnick, I thought that moving to South Bend when I went to college would serve as a “geographic cure.” and it was for a time, but after a few moves around the city, a marriage, and then graduating from college, my wife and I decided that it was time for another cure. So, in 2013 we moved south to Plymouth to be closer to our friends, family, and church.
When Warnick started to question her decision to move to Blacksburg, she decided not to pack up and move because she didn’t want to put her children through more moves. “But at some point, I wondered, shouldn’t responsible parents pick a place and stay there? What is home, after all, if not the house where you took your first steps, the front porch where you played Barbies with the girl from across the street, the street you rode your bike up and down?”
So, she decided to try and gain some place attachment. The term ‘place attachment’ is exactly what is sounds like. Basically, you feel attached to your community. While doing research on place attachment, Warnick states that “when it comes to place attachment, our towns are what we think they are. That means your city doesn’t need to be the Platonic ideal of a city, in the same way you (thankfully) don’t have to be particularly gorgeous, clever, or wealthy to love and be loved.”
Eight years later, I’m still living in Plymouth. Even though my wife and I have divorced, I stayed in the city where she wanted to move to. I didn’t love Plymouth when I first moved here. One of the reasons was that I only spent time in Plymouth when I traveled to South Bend in the morning and then at night.
My attitude toward Plymouth changed when I started working for The Pilot News in 2015. Working for Marshall County’s only daily newspaper, it made me perform mini “Love Where You Live Experiments.”
Warnick performed experiments in ten different categories to try and make herself love Blacksburg. “If you want to love your town, I decided, you should act like someone who loves your town,” she writes.
Over the next couple of months, I’ll be chronicling Warnick’s journey as she attempts to force herself to love where she lives.
“That would be the goal of my Love Where You Live experiments: to choose to love where I was. I wanted the solidly affectionate bond of place attachment, with the rewards that went along with it: stable relationships, secure children, good health, and, for that matter, a nicer town.”
as for myself, while I don’t absolutely love Plymouth, I’ve come to appreciate the city for what it is and what it has to offer. Perhaps through this study of Warnick’s book, I’ll obtain a better sense of place attachment.
If you haven’t read “This is Where You Belong” I highly recommend it. Even if you don’t read it, you can still attend the book club I’m facilitating at the Plymouth Public Library on Tuesdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.