Psychology debunks the idea that we’d be happier if we lived somewhere else

''Virtually every time I travel to a new place, I find myself fantasizing about starting over there. Mostly the feeling sneaks up on me, as it did this summer while I walked on a coastal trail above the Pacific Ocean in Victoria, Canada. Wandering past giddy children and guitar-strumming buskers and off-leash dogs that never barked, I felt the stirrings of place lust in my chest.

In Victoria’s Cook Street neighborhood, the urge intensified. Every Craftsman bungalow was Pinterest-level adorable. Laughter and pizza smells spilled from the open windows of restaurants. The cars (mostly Priuses) seemed to brake at crosswalks even before I knew I wanted to cross the street. I could live here, I thought, snapping photos of “for sale” signs so I could consult the real estate listings later.

I feel hypocritical confessing this, given that I just wrote a book in praise of committing to your hometown. And yet there it is. Hard as I’ve tried, I can’t seem to shake the idea of the geographic cure—the promise that picking up and moving to a new place will change my life for the better...''

by Melody Warnick