I enjoy traveling but I think "travel"-loving culture has done a disservice to us. Romanticism turned consumptive. In elevating wandering it diminishes belonging.

Belonging, creating beauty where you are, is under-appreciated. You must make something worth wandering towards.

And counter intuitively, you will oft do the best wandering where you are most familiar. Travel is a good pastime, but it's something you should try at home, first.

I think this is part of the reason its hard, culturally, to find communitarian places. One is always looking elsewhere.

Creating beauty and places of belonging are acts beyond just the self. I think its worth it to try and create those things, even if only for your own family.

I wrote about this a little, here. https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/familiarity-and-belonging

I say, "Familiarity is crucially the maintaining of weak ties, or else the maintaining of strong ties in weak ways. Some things can only be made strong by binding one thousand tiny threads. ... What creates strong friendships are repeated, tiny, and unplanned interactions."

But its true of more than just friendship, its true even of the places themselves. I recall just now a quote from White Nights by Dostoyevsky that captures it perhaps.

night moves uphill, sleep is going to capture me, I apollo for not replying.