Each year, newly admitted college students and newly-hired staff must make a decision. Whether or not they are willing to leave their home for a new opportunity?
Location can play the role of a stabilizing force. The comfort of being home with family, friends, and memories of childhood days gone past can in sense can prevent a person from wanting to go further. For what purpose is there to leave a place that one loves if they already love their location and the current success that lies with it? The “small-town mentality” still prevents many from rising above to their fullest potential in a new place. This state of mind could be limited by the lack of understanding of the unknown.
If a person knows only a certain place their whole life up until adulthood, they may be less driven to want to leave it. The culture, the language, the people, the traffic, the buildings, and streets are all familiar. This drive to stay relies on the experiences that a person has grown up in their hometown. Holiday parties to hanging friends, family traditions can help to inspire a person to want to grow their success from home. Yet, some hometowns have a lack of diversified opportunities for success in science, technology, writing, business, and the list continues. One must distinguish whether or not the comfort of being home and their success aligns with their goals in life.
The accomplice of the comfort of being home is the fear of what the known locations may offer. Family traditions and memories along with late-night drives down 6th street diminish in the presence of a new place. A person is now tasked to create new memories, cultivate new traditions and learn about possible new cultures and ways of life. The transition from home to the unknown is not an easy one.
But, a new location can help one to push past the barriers of their old home, to become more successful in life. This can be a driving force of encouragement. Growing up in a town with fewer opportunities, resources, death of a loved one, heartbreak, financial struggles, or family conflict can help to inspire a person to want to become successful in a new location. This drive for success can root in a need to bring back the wealth, inspiration, and stories to their hometown.
Some may also find excitement in the invitation to learn about new cultures, languages, people, and food. The move from home can provide an opportunity for some to learn past the homogenous culture that they have been surrounded by and to become more culturally immersed. This immersement can mold a person’s outlook on people of diverse backgrounds and values of cultural diversity.
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