The eternal quest for the perfect home

I don’t much like stillness.

The beginnings of the year delight me because they invite renewal. And renewal is a shiny necklace that I always want to put on. What is good is that in January, I can assume it more. It’s welcome to talk about the goals we set for ourselves, the challenges we impose on ourselves, about all these transformations we dream of, for the coming months… We no longer seem to be eternally dissatisfied, we rather projects the image of motivated people.

I love that.

Personally, my perpetual desire for movement translates into a thirst for moving. It’s not that I particularly like spoofing loose cardboard boxes (maybe I’ll tell you about my duct tape phobia one day), but rather that I’m always looking for better.

And I want to say that I love my house! I have the privilege of choosing the places I live because I like them. However, I allow myself every week to go around the real estate market to see if it might not be possible to move… To put myself in an environment which, inevitably, would influence my daily life.

Who would I be in that house?

Convinced that many of us have to deal with this urge to move—and that I’m not the only one spending my curfew looking at houses for sale on the Internet just for fun—I tried to understand the origins of the phenomenon…

* * *

First call: sociologist Perla Serfaty-Garzon, who has distinguished herself in the world of environmental psychology and who has published several books on the issue, including At home – The territories of intimacy…

“In general, we can’t say that it’s common to aspire to move often, no! “, she throws at me from the outset.

Good…

The essayist reassures me: the phenomenon still exists. Then, without comparing it to travel, we can draw inspiration from it to better understand it.

Doesn’t an insatiable thirst for a new roof stem from an inability to rejoice in what we already have? Or, worse, a reflex of a spoiled person who believes that she should always aspire for more?

Perla Serfaty-Garzon seems to find my questions a bit absurd.

She replies that, on the contrary, coveting a new home means managing to project oneself elsewhere. By refusing to be weighed down by what we have left around us, we also refuse the fantasized ideal of the house. This dream that many maintain by imagining themselves taking root between four walls and embracing stability.

“We prevent ourselves from thinking about it every day, but real life is uncertainty,” says Perla Serfaty-Garzon. It’s something that can change from one day to another! We therefore live with the need to believe that yesterday’s house will be in the same place today and tomorrow… Having the ability to move is rather being able to say to oneself: “I am able to assume the risk of to be elsewhere, I have confidence in myself and I can take my roots everywhere. I am not a tree, I am a being with feet, and feet are made for walking.” »

* * *

Researcher Unsal Ozdilek sees things a little differently…

I contacted the professor from the School of Management Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal, since he has been conducting research in real estate for years. Work that he directs today towards the weight of information on our mental health.

Tie up well!

From the outset, he told me that the desire to move is a known phenomenon in developed countries. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The expression of a reality that falls within his strings as a researcher and which he calls “the malaise of information”…

“Our neurons are fired when they encounter new information because they want to understand it. However, when they manage to solve it, it becomes a memory. So the next time we come across this information, the neurons will be less interested, since they will be conditioned. In the long run, we will get bored. This is why our brain is motivated to always seek novelty. »

Unsal Ozdilek explains to me that when you plan to move, you have access to a panoply of data to tame: you analyze the different attributes of the property, its location, the fauna of its neighborhood, its costs. Each of these attributes brings us newness and excitement. The problem is that once settled in the house, after a number of years, there is a good chance that the excitement will no longer be there. Our brain will want discovery again, and we will relaunch the ball of the quest for an apartment…

“In short, moving is the expression of a need for novelty,” says the researcher. It will quench our thirst for new information, but our expectations will go up in smoke when we have reached what we were looking for, since neurons get used to the same information…”

I therefore understand that I have a nomadic and insatiable brain. Rootless feet. The heart devoid of the fantasy of a house in which to make a whole lineage live… And that this is not a problem, but perhaps the expression of a culture where information is a river.

The year 2022 begins with many challenges that no one wanted, but we can at least get rid of the guilt of still wanting a new roof.

(So ​​if you see a nice five and a half in Montreal, with a small courtyard and large windows, it would be nice to let me know.)