Fifteen years ago I moved to Norway, and though I easily adept wherever you drop me, I have no problems with living here, for all these years. There are a few things that I miss, Norway is more paternalistic, Holland is more liberal. I don’t drink much alcohol but you can not buy it here after eight o’clock, and hard liquor is only available I a few stores. They probable have their reasons but as a grownup man I want to decide myself if and when I buy my alcohol. It’s just an example, but it shows a mentality.
The thing is, when I am in Holland visiting family, and eating the food I missed, or doing other things I can’t do in Norway, the pleasure is there when I finally have the chance, but it also feels that it was only yesterday that I did these things. It’s the same with family, you know them so well that 1 or 2 years away can’t erase the years you spend together. Time is a strange thing, it feels like life is put on pause in Holland when I hop in a plane back to Norway, and it gets unpaused when I am back in Holland.
Maybe it has something to do with me and how I stand in life, the memories of all the things I have done in the past are often enough for me, these memories are a good substitute for any cravings I have. My girlfriend sometimes misses things more than I do, she wanted to live in a city again, for example. One of my arguments against it was that I have lived in cities. I have had that experience, she did to. If we would go back we would just pick up where we where before, and it would not feel refreshing, and new.
If you want to go back to a place where you where before, reality will start where the mundane life you had there, was paused when you left, and not at the “idealized idea” of what life was back then. We live close to a city again, and though I don’t really mind, I drive again over the same roads I have driven over for many years, years ago.
The inspiration for today cam from Day 1403.
Nochrisis 