What If We Are Idealizing the Place We Feel Is More Aligned with Us Than Anywhere Else

Perhaps one of the greatest possible dangers of being in a place we feel is misaligned with us is idealizing the place we feel is more aligned with us than anywhere else as a kind of compensation, compensating for an unsatisfactory present with an imaginary better future.

For me this danger is not only a theoretical possibility as I did fall into it a couple of times in the past when I found myself in a very similar situation. But this time, unlike before, I've refused to let myself be dragged into this danger again by living in the present as I've elaborated in my companion blog post in Russian.

If you also feel you are in the wrong place now, you are welcome to ask yourself whether you are idealizing what you feel is more aligned with you than anywhere else on this planet - or even elsewhere. ;-) It's very easy, and even soothing, to blame the place where you live now by comparing it with your "ideal place" and saying that everything is totally different there as if it were a rose garden with no shortcomings whatsoever.

I once made the mistake of idealizing one such "ideal place" of mine, only to realize later that my "love" for it was blind. In retrospect, I couldn't see it objectively enough while I was still living elsewhere. Idealizing the place I felt was the perfect match for me was a very convenient way to escape from the present in the place where I actually lived.

Hopefully, I'm not making this mistake again. Even when I mention, as objectively as possible and with a sufficient dose of humor, some advantages of the place I feel is more aligned with me than anywhere else to some people here, a few of them wisely ask me if I'm not idealizing it. I have to "disappoint" them every time by saying "no" and even mentioning some of its disadvantages to show that my love for it is not blind this time.

But I also have to be honest with myself. I can't fully deny the possibility that I may still be idealizing this place. I've found a perfect way to check whether I'm making this mistake again or not: (re)visiting this place in the near future. But even then, I may still be idealizing it a little, as I can't fully see, as a tourist, what a permanent resident can see. What I can do is experience this place during my forthcoming visit as if I already lived there.

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What I Did (Not) Quit

I had to quit a number of things to finally quit the very preconception that quitting is always wrong. My own experience has also taught me that it is not.

The decision I made this week to quit yet another social group has made me start asking myself anew what I quit and what I did not quit, and what divided them. I've been intrigued more by categories of what I did (not) quit than by individual cases.

One thing I already know for sure is that I've quit all the conventional human social groups, including communities and clubs, which I joined voluntarily or involuntarily. One fresh case has just joined this long "honorable" list. ;-)

The experience of being forced to quit one social group which I had also been forced to join as a result of my violating one of its unwritten rules has made me very - or even too - sensitive to the collective ego of any social group I subsequently joined, even voluntarily. The same pattern repeated itself again and again. After the initial stage of "honeymoon", I start to feel more and more suffocated.

I wrote about this category in detail in my companion blog post in Russian, so if you are interested, you are welcome to read it there. Even if you don't read Russian, you can use DeepL, which is, in my opinion, the best machine translation tool.

Even after spending quite some time trying to recall things I quit, I haven't been able to identify any other significant category except for one, which consists of only one individual case - quitting alcohol. This category is very unique in that, unlike all the other things I quit, I quit drinking with no relation whatsoever to my own willpower. Every time I told others that I had quit drinking, they praised my strong willpower. I had to try to explain that this occurred precisely when I let go of my willpower to control things.

Now let me switch to the second half of the question of this writing - what I did not quit - which intrigues me no less. Here again I've tried to recall all the meaningful things I didn't quit and categorize them. One significant category has emerged, and I haven't even realized the common denominator among the things in this category until now.

It took me ten years to finish my PhD dissertation, another ten years to find a permanent position in academia, and eight years to find a spouse since I felt I was ready for marriage. At first sight, these three cases of not quitting don't seem to have anything in common. But I've just identified their common denominator. Back then I had a very strong inner motive to persevere instead of quitting before reaching the goal.

In retrospect, I have good reason to believe now that if I had had only an external motive or motives, I might have quit even after encountering the first "threshold guardian".

Now I also realize that this contrast between inner and external motives may be parallel to the contrast between unconditional love and conditional love and between joy as the natural state of the soul and the so-called happiness. The latter, that is, external motives, conditional love, and happiness, all depend on external factors, which by nature come and go and are thus ephemeral. On the other hand, if we base ourselves on something more stable, we have a much higher chance of persevering.

This may also explain why I've been continuing my rather solitary study of Russian. My motives are not only utilitarian but even concern something spiritual. In this respect, my continued study of Russian might even be a spiritual practice for me, so constantly changing external factors don't affect my perseverance.

In retrospect, I learned this unconsciously when I persevered to finish writing my PhD dissertation, finding a permanent position in academia, and finding a spouse. This spiritual "muscle", so to speak, hasn't quit me since then and has remained with me as a kind of "muscle memory".

I started this writing to ask myself a pair of two seemingly mutually exclusive choices - what I quit and what I did not quit. But having written this far, I now realize that they seem to have something fundamental in common: all my decisions to quit or not to quit, at least concerning the above-mentioned things, seem to concern integrity. That is, I quit what turned out to be misaligned with my nonnegotiable core values, and I continued what was aligned with them even after encountering more than one "threshold guardian" along the way.

Test of Revisiting Familiar Places after a Long Time

Generally speaking, revisiting familiar places after a long time can be a pleasant experience. But in certain cases, it can also be a test for us - a test to face the unexpected changes in these places, as well as our own changes inside ourselves and in our relationship to these places.

The test can be especially demanding if we know that we ourselves have undergone some fundamental changes in one or more important areas, such as our state of consciousness and worldview, and we also know that these familiar places have undergone no less fundamental changes since we were there a long time ago.

We often notice changes in other places (and people) more clearly precisely because we haven't seen them for a long time. If we see them every day, we do not always notice their changes. And noticing these changes after our long absence can, in turn, reflect back to us like a mirror those changes that must have taken place inside ourselves.

This late fall I'm planning to revisit two familiar places after a long time. I try to remain open to any surprise I may experience by noticing their changes, for better or for worse, so that I may learn as much as I can from this doubly double test.

I also have mixed feelings about my meetings with the few people with whom I have remained in touch in these two places, as well as my possible chance encounters with those with whom my relationship has faded away over time, also because of the physical distance between us.

I called this test "doubly double" not only because I'll visit two familiar places but also because I have two different, almost opposite new relationships to them since I was there last time. So the contrast that will emerge will be not only between what I remembered about them a long time ago and what I will see this time, but also between these two places.

I also consider this doubly double test a vision quest - or, to be more precise, a doubly double vision quest. Yes, a vision quest, and a doubly double one at that. ;-) You may wonder what kind of vision I seek this time. It concerns something deeply personal and is comprised of a number of delicate and complicated variables. I'll keep it between me and myself, at least until I finish (and fully "digest") it.