The Art of Adjusting

We’ve essentially lived like nomads all my life and the usual duration of our stay in any house would be two years. The longest period of time that I have lived in the same city is seven years, but we shifted houses there a few times too. My father would suddenly announce one day that we were moving again. These decisions to move were sometimes the result of a new job but mostly the result of a whim. Or so it seemed. Either way my brothers and I would invariably throw a tantrum. It was never of any use because we would move anyway but we always tried our best. We would protest about leaving behind friends, music classes, the house and in desperate cases even the restaurants that we used to frequent. We would arrive at the new place, still a bit sulky, but reluctantly fascinated as well. The cites or towns that we would move to were more often than not very different from each other and the first few days would be full of new sights, sounds, languages and people. It would take us some time to get used to the place and we would slowly grow into it. The new place would soon be as well loved the the one before it, though of course there were a few places that we settled into more deeply than others, leading to a tantrum that’s just as as strong as the ones we threw before, sometimes even stronger. We complained and cribbed each time but if we hadn’t moved we would never had the wonderful experiences that we had in so many different places or met the people who became such good friends. We learnt to adjust to change and also to accept it instead of resisting it. We learnt to adjust to different cultures and spaces. I realised the value of the wealth of experience and slowly learned to look forward to each new adventure even though I kept up the ritual drama of protest before every move.