When I moved to Ohio and began attending Kent State University, I found myself faced with the common but difficult question of, “Where are you from?” Often, I responded by stating I was from the metro area surrounding Washington D.C., as that was where I graduated high school and lived prior to going to school. However, in reality, I never really had much of a hometown. My childhood was filled with moving every few years, often to opposite points of the country. Relocating is something that I have been used to.
In fact, I would go even farther to say that to me, it is normal. It is the life I have been exposed to, and to me it’s a natural part of growing and moving forward in life. However, as I spent more time in Ohio, I realized how different everybody else was. Friends would be attending Kent State after growing up less than an hour away, and I would watch them to graduate, find a job, and buy a house, all within an hour or so away. The idea of relocation seems rather foreign, scary, and confusing to a lot of people, and I think there are plenty of rational but incorrect assumptions about moving to somewhere far away.
The reasons we have for moving are virtually limitless: career opportunities, a fresh start, significant others, better weather, the famous food chains down south and so on. However, it seems the reasons people have for not moving often fall into one of three categories: complacency, fear and logistics.
The former example is somewhat common, and is identified by being open to the idea of relocation, but not actively seeking it due to current personal or career opportunities. The latter is a result of external constraints that make it much more difficult, such as financial matters or job contracts. However, after moving constantly throughout my life, and seeing the challenges and rewards firsthand, I want to address what I argue to be the largest obstacle to moving: fear.
When faced with the prospect of moving, there are a number of legitimate concerns that affect almost anybody. Obviously, when you move somewhere new, the friends and family members you have nearby are no longer in the same immediate area. The familiarity you develop with the surrounding area is gone. You might have to adapt to new weather patterns. State and local laws will be different, and likely you will be subject to different cultural norms. In many cases, all of these will be true. However, none of these are inherently negative.
The most common concern, and the one I find to be the most frivolous, is being far from family. I grew up in a third-generation military family, with extended family spread across the nation and sometimes overseas. Yet, everybody is, and has been, extremely close. We share holidays together. We keep up with what is going on in everybody’s lives. If anything, you feel a stronger, more secure connection, knowing that geographical separation will not affect your relationship. Furthermore, I hate to say it, but it needs to be said: this is 2016. Modern technology enables us to communicate through video, audio, and text mediums, virtually instantaneously, all across the globe. Better yet, it is at an almost negligible cost, and this is only the virtual side. Through air and rail transportation companies, and third-party brokerage firms and apps for transport and lodging, visiting people in person is a relatively simple prospect.
Another common myth is that when you move, you lose friends. I can say from experience that this is not necessarily true, for multiple reasons. First off, reference the aforementioned technology. Staying in contact with people is exponentially easier than it was even a decade ago. Secondly, friendship is not bound or determined by geographical ties. How often do people grow apart and go down their own separate paths? I have friends that I met when I was six years old that I stay in contact with across the country, and I’ve had friendships fade with people down the street. I maintain close friendships to this day with many of the people I graduated high school with, and there are friends I had in college that I haven’t spoken to in years. People go down separate paths, and new people come into your life. That would happen if you moved to Australia, and that would happen if you stayed in your hometown. While people do move and overtime lose friends, it is often logically difficult or impossible to prove that moving is what ended it, or that you would still be friends if lived close to each other.
Is moving somewhere new stressful? Absolutely. I’m not going to deny that. It’s like starting a new job, buying a new house, being single for the first time after a long relationship, or virtually any other major change in life. However, we pursue these changes for benefit and opportunity. There are billions of people out there, in a constantly changing world of new jobs, new technology, new relationships, and new opportunity. While chasing a dream in a different part of the country can be daunting, it doesn’t need to be as scary as it sounds.
