Hiraeth: Homesickness for a Place that Doesn’t Exist.

The idea of “home” has always baffled me.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never truly felt at home anywhere.

There are places where I’ve felt comfortable, but they were never technically my “home.” Even as I get older and moved to different towns and cities, I’ve never lived in an apartment or house that I’ve felt completely settled in.

There’s always this nagging restlessness, this feeling that ‘no, this isn’t home either.’

So, where is home? Some can argue that home is inside—that it’s with you all the time. I’d like to believe that and deep down, I think I really do.

But I can’t shake this feeling. All my life, I’ve sought refuge everywhere outside of myself—my grandmother’s house, friend’s houses, the homes of relatives. I’ve always felt like a visitor because, well, I was. I’ve never felt like I completely belonged anywhere, especially the place I was supposed to belong.

Over the past 15 years, I think I’ve moved just as many times. I’ve noticed a pattern: I never stay in one place longer than two years, tops. I usually bounce within a year to year and a half. I just can’t seem to get settled, to put down roots.

This is both disturbing and enlightening to me.

It disturbs me because it makes me wonder what I’m running from. Or better yet, what I’m searching for. I like that I’ve lived in so many places and met so many people. No matter where I go, I always seem to run into someone I know. I kind of like that.

I’ve come to embrace this restless energy inside of me, because it’s propelled me to keep moving, exploring, reaching. It keeps my curiosity alive. Sometimes, I feel like it keeps me young.

And sometimes it wears me down.

I’m very tired, all the time. It tears my sleep away because it never lets my mind rest. I’m always thinking ahead, always worrying, always planning. Always trying to make things work. I’m never completely grounded in the here and now, and as we all know, this moment, right now, is the only one that truly matters.

“The only present that might exist is the one in my mind. It’s the closest we come to the absolute present.”

But then I wonder if I’m always tired because I’m always searching for a place and a time that doesn’t exist. I’m pouring all of my energy into creating the life I’ve always wanted to live, the person I’ve always wanted to be, and to some extent, the place I’ve always wanted to come home to.

Hiraeth: a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.

I guess that’s an apt metaphor for life.

We’re all searching for something. Some feel it more intensely, and those are the movers and shakers, the ones who really leave their mark on this world. They let that restlessness—that drive for more—fuel them. They soak in all the places and faces and names and gestures and words and glances and (not so) chance encounters and joys and tragedies of life that propel them forward. They use it all as fodder to create something bigger; bigger than themselves. Bigger than life, sometimes.

We’re really all time travelers, maybe trying to re-create a feeling we once felt or a dream we once had.

And through this yearning—this nostalgia—we come to create something even better.

“In Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means the ‘pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.”

We draw from our pain. We draw from loss and from heartache. I think the only line we can draw between right and wrong is whether or not we’re utilizing our experiences for the betterment of ourselves and the world around us. Whether or not we’re making something beautiful from something awful. Whether or not we’re able to transform pain into love.

I think home resides in the act of taking something born from darkness and baptizing it in the light of renewal. When you’re able to find peace within pain and build from it, manifesting something you never dreamed possible because it radiates so much light and purity and love—that’s when you’ve come home.

Home isn’t a place; it’s a state of being.

Home is balance. Home is reconciliation. Home is forgiveness. Home is release.

“It’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.”

We ache, we journey back and we take those grueling lessons that keep showing up for us, disguised as different faces and bearing different names, and we morph them into something better. We wake up and step into our power. We lay the foundation for the home we’ve either been struggling to return to, or the one we never had.

Home lies within us all. It’s just a matter of how we choose to make our way to it.

Source: Elephant Journal

Emotional property mistakes that could cost you money

There’s no denying that buying and selling property can be an emotional process. Not only is there a lot of money at stake, but if you’re buying or selling your own family home, there are a lot of conflicting feelings and memories clouding your brain as well.

It’s important to remember that a real estate transaction is most likely the largest financial decision you will have to deal with. As such, it must be handled as a business transaction, and you should never let your heart dictate your choices.

There are several emotional traps you may fall into when dealing with real estate transactions. Here are some to watch out for.

Listening to your heart

Some people claim that about 90% of a purchasing decision is based on emotion and only 10% on logic when it comes to buying and selling family homes.

While this is understandable, it should be avoided. Listening to your heart rather than your head often results in overpaying for a property, rather than being patient and negotiating the best deal possible. This can get dangerous if you don’t have the financial approval for, or the means to cover, the agreed price.

Such emotional distraction can also be detrimental if you’re the vendor. While you may value certain features of your home above all else, potential buyers may not. So putting a premium on it because of your emotional investment won’t do you any favors.

Many vendors make the mistake of thinking their property is the most special and fantastic on the market. But remember, property prices have nothing to do with what you believe and what your emotions dictate; they’re a direct reflection of what is happening in the market and the broader economy.

This is also relevant when you’re facing an auction situation. It’s common for emotional buyers to get caught up in the moment and overbid for the property. Be careful of this. Set a maximum price you can afford, and do not go over it. If you can’t trust yourself, have someone neutral come with you to the auction with no ties to the property, so if it looks like you’re about to go over your limit, they can stop you.

Failing to plan

As they say, “when you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” And a lot of the time, we don’t plan simply because we are emotionally invested in the situation or outcome. But buying and selling property requires enormous planning! You need to set targets and goals, do your research on the selling and buying market, and investigate what options are out there for you.

There’s even planning to do when you finally settle on the property you want. You’ll need to organize inspections before you even attempt to think about purchasing the property. You’ll need to talk to your existing lender, or perhaps need to look elsewhere to find a better deal. You need to discuss contracts with your lawyer to make sure everything is in order. Purchasing a property on a whim means you won’t have this essential information to back you.

And that ignorance can be very costly.

Becoming too attached to a property

This goes for vendors and purchasers. When you’re too attached to your property as a vendor, you’ll likely have unrealistic expectations of the process and selling price. And this can lead to failure.

Being too attached to your property can lead to:

• Asking too high a price

• Ignoring market analysis of the surrounding area

• Thinking the property is perfect and ignoring the need to update things

• Being irrational when taking offers.

As a buyer, if you become too attached to a property, you run the risk of bidding too high at auction and ignoring the need to plan. It also potentially means you’ll be devastated if you don’t get the property, and make the continued search for your next home much harder.

Not considering offers properly

This mostly concerns vendors - the main thing you must remember is to consider every single offer as a serious offer. Often, it’s easy to take everything in the selling process personally, including an offer when it comes in. You need to remember that nothing about real estate transactions should be personal or emotional.

Potential purchasers will point out the flaws in your property, and will often start much lower than they’re willing to pay. And remember, receiving an offer (or multiple offers) means there are serious buyers out there.

Additionally, don’t ignore early offers. The most traction a property will receive is often in the first couple of weeks on market. If a potential purchaser is serious about the property it’s unlikely they will wait until auction, but rather put in an early offer to secure the property.

Don’t let your emotions sway you to think these offers aren’t serious, because they are. Listen to the offer and negotiate. Waiting for a better offer can seriously jeopardize your ability to sell your property because buyers may just walk away if you’re not open to negotiate.

Property dealings can be an emotional rollercoaster. Whether you’re selling or buying, it’s a big deal to buy or sell a home. But it’s important to remember that these are business deals, and letting emotions get in the way may have dire financial consequences.

Source: Ziggurat Real Estate

The City Environment and Happiness Across the Lifespan

The impact of place and government performance

Millions of people migrate every year from rural to urban areas. At a time when most cities around the world are projected to experience exponential growth (United Nations, 2015), more work is needed to understand how the city environment influences happiness and health across the lifespan.

The population of the world is growing, cities are getting bigger, and the ongoing environmental design challenges are immense. If we’re going to live in a city for the whole of our life—from childhood to old age—along with millions of other people, we need to think very carefully about how we design our cities. Past research highlights that older adults want to “age in place”, to live in a location of their choice and retain continuity and control over their daily life. For this to be feasible, we need to consider transportation, recreational and cultural opportunities, and amenities that facilitate physical activity, social interaction, and access to destinations (Lui, Everingham, Warburton, Cuthill, & Bartlett, 2009). With regard to young people, Richard Florida (2005, 2010) has demonstrated that talented, highly educated, and creative young people tend to cluster together in today’s modern cities, and are particularly concerned about the quality of life in their cities. Recent research on the city environment and residents’ happiness highlights an important distinction between the role of place and performance variables (Goldberg, Leyden and Scotto, 2012; Leyden, Goldberg, and Michelbach, 2011). Place variables include residents’ ratings of how beautiful their city is, how proud they are to live there, and how easy it is to access amenities, green spaces, and public transportation. Performance variables include residents’ ratings of the city’s basic services such as good schools, healthcare opportunities, safety from crime, and facilities serving the disadvantaged. Whereas place variables are more about enhancing the pleasantness of the city, performance variables are more about providing for basic needs. The individual happiness of city residents is associated with their ratings of both place and performance variables (Goldberg et al., 2012), which have both direct effects on resident happiness and indirect effects mediated by health and social connections (Layard, 2005). But do these effects of place and performance vary across the lifespan? We recently examined this issue in a large-scale survey of 5,000 younger and older adults living in Berlin, London, New York, Paris, and Toronto. We hypothesized that both place and performance variables would be important for the happiness of city residents. However, given that older adults may require more resources to remain independent, we also hypothesized that in the older adult group, performance variables would contribute more to happiness than place variables. Likewise, given that younger adults appear to value vibrant cultural and urban scenes, we hypothesized that the happiness of younger adults would depend more on place indicators.

Survey respondents were asked to make self-assessments of their happiness, health, and social connections, and to evaluate different aspects of their cities. We studied four age groups: young (25–34 year olds), young middle aged (35–49 year olds), older middle aged (50–64 year olds), and older adults (65–85 year olds). When analysing the effects of performance and place indicators on happiness we controlled for a number of other factors that affect happiness, namely relative income, self-rated health status, relationship status, employment status, and relations with community and friends. Our study revealed a number of interesting effects. Consistent with previous research, we found that the character and beauty of cities and the accessibility of amenities such as parks, public transportation, and recreational and cultural activities (i.e., place variables), as well as quality of government services associated with policing, schools and healthcare (i.e., performance variables) influence the happiness of city residents. Importantly, the happiness of younger city residents is more likely to be affected by place variables whereas for older residents, performance variables are more important. Specifically, our statistical model revealed that the influence of the city performance variables on happiness increases from younger to older cohorts. The opposite trend was found when the relationship between place and happiness was examined. The results of our study suggest that younger residents are happier when they have easy access to theatres, museums, a variety of shops, convenient public transportation, parks, and sports facilities. They are happier when they have options that enable them to experience the city culturally and socially, when they feel proud of their city, and when they perceive their city as beautiful. This means that to attract younger residents cities must create and maintain high quality, accessible place amenities.

However, interestingly and unexpectedly, the city as a place does not significantly influence happiness among older residents (at least not directly). Happiness for older adults is affected more by the perceived quality of government services in the city, such as safety from crime, good schools, and access to quality healthcare for children, the socially disadvantaged, elderly, disabled, or poor. In general, the younger a resident the more likely they are to be influenced by place variables, and the older they are the more likely they are to be influenced by performance variables. City residents in the young middle age category (35–49 year olds) are influenced by both.

The attractiveness of cities, the convenience of public transportation, the availability of cultural, sport and shopping amenities, and the quality of city services are shared responsibilities among many groups including engineers, planners, architects, developers, business leaders and government policymakers, and thoughtful human decision-making can determine the success of cities in providing residents with opportunities to have a meaningful quality of life and age in place. The overall performance of cities may become increasingly important as people age and their functional capacities decline. The environment becomes increasingly important in supporting independence and well-being as we age. It is important that we consider residents of all ages in urban planning. It is important that we consult with citizens in the design of well-being policies and city design projects (Hogan et al., 2015).

The ability of cities to offer functional and recreational amenities and provide meaningful services that people value not only directly affects happiness, it is also significantly associated with other factors important to happiness such as health and social connectedness. These findings come at a time when most cities around the world are experiencing massive growth (United Nations, 2015) and world leaders are increasingly using measurements of well-being to evaluate their culture and society (Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2009). Our work contributes to an emerging understanding that both place-making and policy-making matter for the happiness and health of people living in cities. Simply put, it is thoughtful human decision-making, not random chance that determines the success or failure of cities to provide opportunities for residents to have a successful and meaningful quality of life and to age in place.

Making good decisions in this context amounts to a good investment in our own future, given that these decisions have a significant impact on the vitality of our cities and our health and happiness over the lifespan.

Source: Psychology Today