So I’m not sure if this is age related or not. I’m a 21 year old male, maybe you could share your age as well.
So basically for a long time (probably my whole life) I had this deep longing/fantasy to live at a different place than the one I’m living right now. As if I don’t belong where I’m from and need to be somewhere else to truly feel home. I’m from northern Germany and always had the deep desire of traveling places.
When me and my family went on vacation when I was a kid for example when we flew to Egypt it felt like a wonderful dream as if I was in heaven or something. I just love when I’m in totally different environments like coming from the cold Germany into a tropically warm climate, in a country that is very different, with very different culture and mentality in this beautiful and gigantic hotel resort.
Idk how to describe it but it’s like my core desire got fulfilled.
I never felt home here in Germany and my deep desire always was to live somewhere else where there is a very different culture and environment.
A significant amount of time I always wanted to go to America. I’ve never been there so far unfortunately.
But I always had this feeling that I didn’t felt right where I’m from and was always searching for this place where I can feel home, where it’s wholesome and I feel freed from all worries, where I have deep/meaningful connections and can fully live in joy and embrace every little moment of life in this deeply joyful way like living like a child again.
I assume a lot of this is probably just some psychological phenomenon that is inducing a fake/unreal fantasy. I assume even if I could move to some other country I might not feel as joyful like when I was a kid and even if I do, at some point it might not feel special anymore and it might not be like I hoped.
So maybe this is just this classic “the grass seems always greener on the other side” thing and in reality it might not be like that.
But I wonder does any of you also have this deep inner fantasy of living in a different place/culture where it kinda feels magical to live and you have ultimate happiness? It might be something unrealistic or a place that doesn’t exist but it’s like a deep feeling in me and I wonder if others also have it. Maybe it goes deeper and it is this “leftover” from childhood that I remember and that I’m longing for? Maybe it’s a fantasy of being a kid again?
Yes, I use this as a way to relax and go to sleep. Considering I live in the US, I need the escape.
Yes. I very much felt like this. In many ways I have done it by moving from Alabama to California. These are as different as a foreign country and culture. It does not live up to the fantasy. There are good and bad aspects. The bad that you cannot put in perspective effectively until midlife is the value of your social network connections at this phase in your life. Making as many friends as you can and staying in touch is really critical where you’re at in life right now. Those people are your career paths, partners, and key supporters later. The desire to leave and explore is undervaluing this connections in regrettable ways later in life. Weight this change against your introversion versus extroversion. If you are very introverted, you will struggle to build a sufficient support network in the absence of those you grew up with. Age, for most people, is accompanied by ever increasing loneliness in ways that are hard to fathom in youth. It is not just motivations and desire to interact with others. It is also your own increasing complexity, interests, and finding compatible people that also have the space in life for you and the motivation to put forth the effort. Life evolves in phases where you cannot go back and redo mistakes made.
Thanks for the answer. I always had a fantasy about going to California. I imagine the place to be beautiful with all the palm trees, beaches with warm/open-minded people and I bet they have great resorts too. But I also heard about the dark site that it might not be as many would imagine it in terms of the people and that there’s also a big problem with poverty, injustice and homelessness.
California is not touristy like many other places around the USA. There are areas like around Disneyland that are more tourist oriented, but even around Anaheim, you will not find high budget tourist restaurants or resorts outside of Disney's property. Disney World in Florida is the large scale experience, but that is super expensive and I'm jaded from childhood versus the reality of experience.
Generally speaking, Southern California is probably a little less of a culture shock to a European versus anywhere in the continental interior of the USA. I imagine rural backwardness is a fairly universal human experience anywhere around the world.
I believe you will find that the lack of land use zoning reform and management of home ownership is a universally Western problem common to Europe and the USA. None of us have the legislation that enables young family ownership with the excess income required for a below average person to start a family. The larger the population is, the larger the issue becomes. In truth there is a caveat. The key issue is the change in population migration. The more people that move to an area, while there are no land reforms to control the supply and cost of housing, the larger the cost of living and the larger the number of people struggling at the bottom. In California, housing prices are ridiculous and so is the cost of living. Everyone struggles in fairly similar ways at the bottom of the economy in every place.
In Deutschland you have a far more egalitarian set of protections and rights. The government of the USA has been stagnant for the average person’s rights and protections since around the 1970’s. The USA has around 1/10th the laws and protections of the leading European countries. The USA is very much a failing democracy in really bad shape where we are quite powerless to change it as citizens. Participation at the level required for change is far more consuming than the time available for the average person. Even when participating, one must deal with an extremely corrupt system of gerrymandering and antiquated representative disconnections that obscure accountability and participation.
Outside of the social issues, all the images you see of beaches in Southern California are fake. All the sand is basically from Australia and elsewhere. The water off the coast of Los Angeles is very deep unlike places like Florida where all beaches are sandy, and the water is warm because it is shallow for a great distance off shore and supports things like coral and more plant life that retains and helps generate more sand.
The while Southern California beaches thing is an oddity. For most of the year it stays too cool for swimming in a speedo or bikini. The water is usually cold too. Most people that surf, use a spring wetsuit almost all year. There are a half dozen times when the weather changes and the winds blow really hot air from the desert into the area. This is when the real California beach culture happens like you see in movies or TV. It is not a year round thing or central to the culture or touristy. Most California coastline is lined with residential housing, not resorts. Other than the ocean front homes, just inland is regular housing with average cost. Even the ocean front homes are mostly regular homes that just cost more for the view. These front line homes are usually on top of a cliff around 30 meters above the beach. There are still some spots with homes at ocean level, but these are like 20:80 ratio at this point. There used to be more homes on the beach but deep water just a few meters offshore has caused most of these to get demolished eventually due to erosion.
Hollywood is a joke, and not worth a second thought. There is no destination to see anything remarkable. Hollywood does not have a monumental heritage like destination. The studios are walled off large industrial building sites. The sidewalk of the stars is down an old street in a rough neighborhood. Beverly Hills is nearby and just a rich neighborhood. Downtown Los Angeles is a pitiful excuse for a downtown and one of the most disappointing in the country. San Fransisco, or even San Diego are more impressive for nightlife and a real downtown.
The thing to keep in mind is that the cost of living in any area is not random or by chance. It is always directly related to the employment opportunities in the area. Los Angeles is not the place to come visit, it is the place to move to. It is one of the only places in the USA with a more egalitarian focus where people dominate slightly more than the ultra rich.
If you go somewhere like Florida, the entire coastal economy is centered around tourism. In California, you have to know where to go to find tourism and these are little walled garden like islands in places Californians would like to get rid of entirely.
