A simple question.
Often asked.
When first we meet.
With new people.
Friends, colleagues, strangers.
One of our favourites.
Alongside ‘What do you do?’
But that’s another story.
So, where do you live?
There can be more to this.
Yes, there is a house, or a flat, or such.
If you are lucky.
Widen that a little.
There is a building, a street.
A town, a city, a country.
Helpful geographical markers.
Widen a little further.
Perhaps a little laterally.
Moving away from geography.
There are groups of people.
Families, teams, communities.
Companies because, well,
they are called that due,
to the group of people who make them.
Nations, cultures, tribes.
We inhabit all of those too.
We live within those.
Which brings us to a different question.
An interesting question.
Where do you live most fully?
Where do you consider your life to be lived?
It might be the gym.
The place and the people.
Where you feel most yourself.
Where you are at peace.
Where life feels fullest.
To which you lend priority.
Or maybe it is your business.
The place and the people.
Or your family and home.
The place and people.
Which is an interesting lens.
To look through.
Which areas of your life are the setting?
There to provide support and facilitate.
Which areas of your life are the main act?
That which other areas support.
It can be easy to get a little lost in our own lives. For events, relationships, habits and perspectives to drift and evolve in their own ways. Exploring which areas of our lives have priority can be useful now and again. If we find that we live in work and we allow the rest of our lives be in service of that, we can ask ourselves if we are happy with that situation. Which areas of your life serve other areas? If we notice an imbalance, the origins of which we can’t identify, we can work to readjust and align with how we’d like to live. To align with where we would like to live. There are many dimensions and ways to answer the question…
Where do you live?