Day 31: Place

I love Alaska.  I absolutely love it!  I love the mountains and the rivers, the trees and the moose.  I love the people, my friends, and my family.  I love the cold winter nights and bright summer days.  I love campfires and skiing, hiking and the northern lights.  I even love the rainy summers and the butt-cold days in the winter.

I moved to Boston 5 years ago.  Let me tell you… Boston is NOT Alaska.  So much of my life here in no way resembles my life back home.  I am in the city.  Loud noises, people all around, flat landscape and concrete all around me.  I visited my friend in Spartanburg last week and took a picture in front of a wall (below).  Centered on the wall were the words “Love where you live.”

The value of this statement struck a chord with me.  In a sense, I am stuck where I am living, even if it is temporary.  True, I have the options to pick up and move somewhere else, but I have resigned to the fact that Boston will be ‘home’ for my undergraduate years. 

So since Boston is where I am living, and I have decided to live here and stay here for a while, I should now love Boston.  Of course, I do not have to love Boston.  But I figured out pretty quickly that if I did not at least adopt the attitude that I should like Boston, life became very much not fun.

We do not always pick or like the places where we are living.  I noticed that when I compared Boston to Alaska, I often began to miss home and detest living in this northeast city.  Instead of comparing, I needed to redirect my attention to discover what Boston (and the surrounding areas) had to offer, independently of my love for Alaska.

I will always love Alaska.  But I will also try to “Love where I live,” wherever that may be.