Philosophy and The Rambling Man

Okay, so another intense posting day today...two more entries for the Guide to University (I think that's about it) and lots of reading for you.

Only, in the run up to the beginning of the Autoblography New York Diaries on Thursday, I've been thinking.

Unusual circumstances make me feel...better.

Just something enough to be out of the ordinary to be interesting or varied, you know.

When we had snow, not too long ago, I had been putting off walking home in the previous evenings for crappy reasons - it's cold...it's dark (how very odd!)...it might rain...but when there was a full-on blizzard I happily pulled on my work boots and tramped home cheerfully in record time.

I have always thought that the personal familiarity with our surroundings that makes somewhere feel like home is something that builds up over time. That feeling of familiarity is a kind of security.

When you take people out of that security; put them in new surroundings, they slowly build up a similar kind of familiarity with them; 'home' sinks in, and after a while that security is also apparent with the new environment.

If someone moves constantly, never staying in one place long enough for this to happen, then that security does not necessarily disappear...maybe it becomes something that the person carries around with them, as part of themselves rather than split between themselves and a secure and familiar environment.

I have seen it in people who have been on long backpacking trips and I think it happened to me too; I became more confident, outgoing and secure in myself.

Maybe it is this aspect of unfamiliar occasions and situations that I like; I know it is giving me an opportunity to prove that I am worthy of my own self-confidence; an opportunity that in the normal run of things, I don't get.

Still, it's pretty twisted.