I do like where I live ...

So when I hear things about New England and it's history and culture and people, I tend to pay attention.

Just recently, the peeps over at GoFundMe declared we New Englanders to be the most generous:

We occupy the top three positions on their per capita donations rankings, and four out of the top five, and six of the top ten.

Despite this love of where I'm from, my wife and I are discussing where we want to live the rest of our lives.

It's not a decision to be made immediately. I'm currently enrolled in another degree program so I couldn't move immediately anyway. And she has a successful accounting practice here.

But long term ... It's this where we want to call home? It's an open discussion.

Do you love where you live?

Would you ever pick up and move?

What would motivate such a decision?

Is climate a good enough reason?

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

Climate is important, to me at least. Apart from the job it's a big part of why we decided to stay in Norway. But even more important is that things work, that there be little friction between state and person. Norway scores high there too, again for me.

I spent the first thirty years of my life in the South of England and until I left I couldn't really imagine living anywhere else. But that wasn't because where I lived was better or better suited me, I simply didn't know anywhere else that was better for me. I tried a long winter holiday 'back home' in the UK a couple of years ago and fled back to actual home after only six weeks, couldn't take the UK winter climate any more!

But now I've written all that (have you got this far?) I realize that of course the reason I stay here could well be the same as the reason I stayed in the South of England: it's that I just don't know of anywhere better for me not that such a place doesn't exist.

So I probably, at age seventy, won't move again. Not from country to country, not even out of the village. But I will spend a lot of time in the UK on long summer holidays because of this:

sarabee1995 · 31-35, F

@ninalanyon I think in the winter, I'd prefer Norway or a tropical island over anywhere in the British Isles. That damp, foggy, misty miserableness that the UK offers in the winter is beyond me.

But yes, what you say about the lack of conflict between the person and the state is very true across Scandinavia. It's not something I often think about as an American. We tend (most of us, not all) to be somewhat suspect of government in most situations.

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@sarabee1995 One thing at a time I can take, damp is bearable, fog is fine, and Keats' line in the Ode to Autumn, 'The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' describes a delightful time of year.

But in December, January, and February when you get damp with 10 C and a wind that blows your umbrella inside out, when the rain comes horizontally straight at you from far out in the Atlantic, that's when it gets miserable. It's when the wind blows that damp straight through your skin into your bones. I couldn't live on the west coast of Norway for the same reason. I'll take three months of snow and -10C instead.

I never used an umbrella in the first thirty years of my life because I never experienced rain that fell from the sky, only the kind that hits you in the face. It wasn't until we moved to the east of Norway that I experienced calm enough weather to use one!