Find a Place. Learn to Belong to It.

This video is about the radical concept of BELONGING—to a place, to a community—and about PERMANENCE, sinking roots, building robust relationships, living in the same place for your entire life.

We—and I'm speaking mostly to millennials and generation Z—don't value these things. Broadly speaking, we value EXPERIENCES. We tend to evaluate the worth and fullness of our lives based on the amount and quality of experiences we have had. Therefore we are obsessed with things like TRAVELING more than any other previous generation, because travel offers the hope of new and powerful experiences, of seeing 'this' and doing 'that,' and having a picturesque Instagram account.

Of course traveling is not bad in and of itself, nor are new experiences. In fact, I think they are pretty great. The problem is that we put MOST, if not ALL of our hope and value in chasing EXPERIENCES, which makes us devalue other things that, I argue, are far more important than transitory experiences. We forget the importance of STABILITY, of finding a place and making it your own. We fail to build lasting relationships. We never create a long history in a single place. Our story is never fully known in a single community that we call OURS.

I'm not really saying that you should never travel. I'm saying that it is not as great or important as you think it is. I'm saying that you should find a place that you can love being, and invest in that place. Belong to it. Leave your mark on it. Build bonds with people that last a lifetime. I'm saying that, if you travel, you must always be focused on COMING BACK. There should always be a patch of ground, a group of people, to which you return. No matter where you go, your destination should always be your village.

In modern society, connection no longer happens as a matter of course, as it once did in premodern societies. Because of our unprecedented resources and technology we can go pretty much wherever we want, whenever we want, if we make sacrifices. We have the option to leave our homes, or if we stay in one place, the option to stay inside, binge Netflix, surf the internet, and ignore the people around us. If we want to carve out a rich niche for ourselves that we call HOME, we have to be INTENTIONAL. That's what this video is about.

[douglasarchibald]

We see this concept in the commercialization of Tolkien's line "Not all who wander are lost." In the commercialized decontextualized version of this line, it seems to celebrate getting lost in travel and adventuring. But the complete poem indicates the opposite. It is actually a prophecy about Aragorn. Even though at the beginning of the story he seems to be a wanderer, the poem tells us that he actually has a home, a strong purpose, and deep roots to his community, Gondor. He is wandering now so that he can get back home and rebuild his kingdom. Most who wander ARE lost. Aragorn was the exception because he had roots, home, and a purpose.

[iloveprivacy]

Criminally underrated.
I remember a colleague, years ago, back from a beach vacation & complaining: couldn't wait to be back on the beach. And I thought: wouldn't it be better to build a life you weren't always trying to escape? I'm grateful to her for the lesson.
Now, if only there were people around me who felt the same way.
(Sorry for the paragraph: mostly this comment is for the algorithm!)

[cookiedestroyer]

Never leaving your home town isn't so bad when your home town has a community but today when your home town is rows of endless suburban houses, or crowded dirty cities its obvious why staying there your whole life is horrifying

[agent]

I absolutely detest traveling. Budgeting, planning, being away from home, wasting money, waiting long hours at the airport, I can go on and on. Much rather stay home in my vacations.

[dieoo]

Agree. Traveling has become a momentary escape to the shitty life that we have to endure from Monday to Friday, I think the key is to change that routine life that we dislike so that we do not "need" vacations and enjoy a trip as a choice and not as a need

[judethree]

Traveling can be exhausting, also, at a certain point, the traveling to new places is largely the same as other places and starts to not be so novel anymore.

[coltonc]

As someone who moved frequently growing up and currently lives in a foreign country, someone who doesn't have a "home" to return to, I've begun to have similar thoughts about the fetishization of travel by younger people as what you describe. Travel in and of itself isn't as interesting as many make it out to be, and the sort of experiences one can have through it aren't either. Travel alone doesn't make a person better, more worldly, more open. And living rhizomatically, with roots spread out over great distance without depth, isn't ideal. It's easy to "find yourself" on a backpacking trip spanning months in another continent, but it's hard to be a part of a community and know yourself and others through that limiting perspective. If there is one thing I hold as truth, it's that there are people worth knowing everywhere. You don't have to go far to find them.

[quadders]

I have been thinking this videos sentiment for several years now but have kept it to myself as every message that we are bombarded with keeps telling us that being rootless is freedom. That everyday must be some wonderous new experience with new people and places. Cannot express how heart warming it feels to know that others feel the same way in these comments and this video.

[alexk]

One motivation, which is admittedly my own for travel, is to try to fight the compression of years. A year used to take so long and now they are so short I drive all over the country in order to differentiate between this year and five years ago; I can tell myself, "Oh yeah 3 years ago. That's when I went to yellowstone." That makes it easier to ignore how quickly I'm quitting the scene.

[internetpleb]

On every single hero’s journey the hero leaves their boring home town/village where nothing really changes to go off on a exciting/ dangerous adventure and we are ifniced through the mainstream books movies and even culture to go and travel

But one thing that our literature teachers don’t tell us is that not everybody is the main hero not everybody can just up and leave their community home a place that they might have a strong connection and maybe they don’t want to nor is there any shame in staying.

Before you spend thousands of dollars traveling across the world or country to find some kind of novelty try to find it more closer to home I’d wager you will find something that you didn’t end know existed.

[AlexandraZe]

Actually I do understand the beauty of travelling, because I love seeing new places, history, eating new food, experiencing different languages and so on. But unfortunately, travelling is not for everyone. Even if I love all the above mentioned, I always find myself dreading sleeping in hotels, having insomnia, being stuck in a plane/bus for hours on end, etc. And I look at most of my friends and 90% of them travel because it's a "must", if you will. The all too familliar question "so, where will you go to on your holiday?". Because it's never acceptable enough to say "nowhere, at home". Because you are considered either poor or boring if you just enjoy your normal day to day activities. Reading a book, engaging in your favourite hobbies, walking around in nature, going for a picnic, having a barbecue with your family, calling your grandma and chatting for hours with friends on camera. All of these are "nothing" if you didn't spend a small fortune on a trip you just weren't sure you wanted to make. I wish people would normalize not travelling. Sometimes I feel the need to go somewhere out of pure peer pressure, and that's just awful.

[patriciamartin]

After a life of nonstop travel, I quit after a trip to the UK. Nothing to do with that place, but I was retired. I want to self isolate. I wanted to get up in the morning, have my coffee, a hot shower. For 20 years, I haven't gone any further than 20 miles from my home. I rarely see another person except when I go shopping. I have an LTR, a former combat vet andformer world traveler that I live with. Often, we can spend entire days under one roof without speaking because there isn't any need to. We can anticipate each others needs without words. After 9/11, I was positive my decision to self isolate was the correct one. I enjoy the isolation, , spending my days doing what makes me happy. I can look out my bedroom window and see the airport, but I don't have the slightest desire to travel. The only thing that bothers me is he wants to visit his family in Europe this year. Not me, the very thought of being on a plane away from the comforts of my home, makes me sick. I really don't want to be around anybody. I need my isolation. Travel is inconvenient. It is the very last thing I want.

[christopherherr]

I went to Japan years ago and I loved it. The things I saw and did were very special to me, but the biggest part of that was that I shared it with my friends and family. I'd love to go again, maybe learn the language be able to speak to people, but I know where my home is. Learning to find the joy and love in everyday "mundane" things what's something that I'm glad I could do.

[SlavaUkraini]

I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle. I do love traveling with my wife like nothing else. But every time we travel we are happy to return to our place which we call our home

[Lorax_Tribe]

I practice Thoreau’s idea of having more value exploring your own backyard than visiting the great cultural and exotic locations in the world. That’s why I hike, camp, climb, and kayak in my backyard, watching videos and news of the greater world vicariously on the internet. He also said, “I’d rather sit on a pumpkin, than the finest velvet chair”.

[EricHrahsel]

I believe that a man's destiny is his village but his journey is elsewhere.

[KUPHSER]

I’ve traveled through Europe, North America, South America, India, Bhutan, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia.. so far none of this travel has opened my mind like actual life experiences I’ve had to either work for, or emotionally recover from..
I think that if I were to travel to a spot where it was hard like a war torn country, then perhaps travel would teach me something

[logh]

I really empathize with your description of rootless wandering. I never spent 2 years in a row in the same place all through my 20s. I get such a sense of relief and satisfaction now when I can sign the same lease on the same apartment year after year. On the other hand, I was finally able to find a job and a neighborhood I love partially *because* I experienced many different things and places. It helped me figure out what I really want in life. And I did end up settling down much closer to my original home than I had originally intended, lol. I realized the roots I had around here are truly irreplaceable.

On a side note, I think there's a lot to be said for the kind of traveling where you just go stay in one place for several weeks. You get to really relax and experience the place, instead of racing around trying to "see all the sights" and get all the pictures.

[TheEngineerd]

I do travel a few times a year, but when it's over, I basically think along similar lines. Every experience will fade away, and all I'll be left with is pictures that may help me vaguely remember what it was like to be there.

[mentalmadness]

The best thing about travel is that after a week or two you can finally return home. And the biggest problem with staying in one same place is that you can be surrounded with toxic people and bad habits that can easily change when you move localtion, it's not until you remove yourself from that place you realize how bad the people were for you.