Close your eyes—wait, actually, don’t close your eyes. Finish reading this paragraph first, then close your eyes. Can you recall everything around you? Could you walk to the exit blindfolded? How much money would you be willing to bet that you know every nook and cranny of this place you’re in? Okay, now close your eyes, and try to recall this place you’re in.
Hopefully you’ve opened your eyes again and decided to keep reading. It’s hard to know everything about the space around you, not just in arm’s reach, but for miles around you too. It’s hard to say you truly know every building, every tree, every quirk and oddity of the place you live. There are probably entire paths and streets you’ve never touched. With so much unknown, how can you claim you truly know a place?
At every corner, there’s adventure and excitement and newness that you’ve just never seen before. It could be great; it could be horrible. What matters is that there is something new. A place can never really get old, not without some dedicated effort at least.
That’s not to say knowing a place is impossible. Knowing exists on a spectrum of bare minimum to every possible detail. If you’re happy with where you are, enjoy it. Being familiar with where you are is a blessing, and no one should be denied the comfort of familiarity.
Comfort is nice, but eventually it feels old, and I need to seek out new. The new becomes familiar, familiar becomes comfortable, comfortable becomes old, and the cycle repeats. I’ve been repeating this over and over for far too long, but I don’t want to stop. Rather, I can’t stop. This place is new. It has to be new, because if the things around me haven’t changed, then it’s harder to see that I have.