Ever since I moved a little more than a month ago, I’ve been thinking about the process of becoming familiar with a new place. Everything from big things, like making sure you turn down the right street on your way home from work, down to the small things, like the specific way you have to finagle your key in order to open the door or the way the light from street lamps pours through the window at night.
It seem to be pretty undeniable that the world has changed a lot in the last 2-3 weeks. At times it feels like it’s hard to keep up with how different things are. What’s strange to me is how familiar it already feels, while still feeling intensely foreign at the same time. I suppose familiarity is strange that way. Deceptive, we could maybe call it? It’s almost like Familiarity likes to lull us into a false sense of security and then just say, “Psych!” It feels both like almost no time has past and also like it’s almost hard to remember what life was like “before.” I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel that way either. It’s not often that so many significant changes take place in such a short space of time. It’s understandable to feel a bit of whiplash. We certainly live in incredible times.