Your home is your sanctuary, the refuge that you return to after battling relentlessly with the outside world. The act of closing the door behind you, slipping off shoes from aching feet and sinking onto the welcoming bed is one of the simplest yet most profound joys. You are cocooned off from the vagaries of nature and humans alike, happy and comfortable in your own little world.
So when this sanctuary is suddenly unfamiliar, it's a huge shock to the system. Sure, you consciously weighed the pros and cons and made the decision to shift to a new place. But your mind and body do not always collaborate. Your fingers repeatedly reach for the wrong switches, your limbs take familiar angles and turns in surroundings that don't match the movements, and you lie awake listening to new kinds of groans and creaks as the house settles down for the night. You miss how the plants spilled out on the window ledge, can't help but regret how spacious your old kitchen was and yearn for the rhythm of life you were so used to.
But then the fickle human mind being what it is, one tends to focus on the good things, the things that are better, that are now available vis-à-vis the old place. You feel smug that the cross ventilation is sooo much superior (I was almost, though not quite, blown away), play with the camera outside you door (so posh!), and jump like a giddy little kid to discover there's actually a picturesque old man on a rusty bicycle who delivers fresh eggs and bread to your doorstep. Slowly but surely, your old habits and patterns fade away, and new rhythms fall into place. Soon enough, THIS becomes your sanctuary, and the other slides into the background, merely a faint bittersweet shadow of a memory...
Originally written on July 18, 2016
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