Where you live isn’t always the same place as your home. But it could be, writes Arthur C. Brooks in one of the most popular editions of his “How to Build a Life” column for The Atlantic.
Brooks, a Harvard social scientist, explores the concept of topophilia, meaning love of a place. Your ideal home, the highly topophilic place in your heart, might not be where you were raised or where you currently reside, he explains. Maybe it’s another country or a different neighborhood. Maybe it’s somewhere that brings you closer to nature or to loved ones.
Is it worth moving to that place, even when it’s costly and taxing, when it’s hard to defend logically, when some people will marvel at the “sheer audacity of moving for a feeling”? According to Brooks, the answer is yes.
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