Often I am asked why I live in the Northeast United States. This is not normally a question asked to just anyone but I have a shoulder injury that is effected everyday by the weather. Doctor’s, friends and well wishers alike have asked me this saying that I may be more comfortable in the dry, humidity-free heat of Arizona, New Mexico or Nevada. So why stay? I have never really been happy with the cold winters and the rainy springs.
This got me thinking about proximities.
About 5 minutes in the next town over from my house there happens to be, I’ve been told, quite a sizable Swedish population. Odd I never knew this. Why the sizable Swedish population in this small town and why do they stay? People generally stay somewhere because of work perhaps or a tethering relationship but still I wondered.
So with the question still looming I recently chatted with a young Swedish college student studying in the US. She had to go home to resubmit the application for her school visa. She looked at me blankly with no answers.
Sweden, full of tasteful design, good-looking people, a very clean environment, advanced industry, excellent tuition-free college education for all Swedes and a fairly small population of 9 million people in the whole country (compared to 10 million people just in NYC alone), seems ideal. Why then the reticence to return to a country that has so much going for it?
I’m still perplexed but I have learned one thing. Change of environment is exciting but being comfortable and feeling at home in whatever region, whatever country is based on an internal feeling that only that person understands.
Finally!
Något jag förstå! (Something I understand!)
Något jag förstå! (Something I understand!)
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