Tunneling

A boss I had a long time ago sat down with our whole brand strategy department, which was pretty big at the time, and asked all of us what our job was. “What business are we in?” was his question. It was a brainy group, so he got lots of thoughtful answers: distilling complexity into a story people can understand; finding a human truth that can drive a brand narrative; helping a company define its audience-first place in the world.

Wrong.

Brand strategists, he said, are in the business of behavior change. Our job isn’t to create communications that make people nod their heads and smile and agree with us and then continue on their way. Our job is to make people do something. Or buy something. Or opt into or out of something when otherwise they’d stay put. Our job is to make people move.

There’s a particular communications strategy that’s been unusually effective with Millennials for years: nostalgia marketing. Those throwback commercials with products and imagery and music and logos from our childhoods? Those aren’t floating around just because they’re cute. They work. And they work because our generation has been the first to experience a new phenomenon: early onset nostalgia.

Nostalgia, an emotional response that used to take decades and decades to form, started hitting us in our 20s. Our generation experienced such a rapid, outsized pace of change from our childhoods through our early adult years that it triggered our brains to yearn for “days gone by” long before we turned 30. In the grand scheme of things, our “days gone by” didn’t happen that long ago - days before cell phones, days before smart phones, days before the majority of our relationships existed on an app - but by our first college reunion we were starting to feel that those days were part of a world that was long gone.

I learned a word a handful of months ago that was first coined in 2012 or 2013, but I can’t think of a word more perfect for the times we’re living in right now: solastalgia. It basically means nostalgia on steroids. It’s a word that was created in the context of shale gas mining boom towns - places where, in the space of two weeks or so, residents who were accustomed to rolling hills and trees and wide open spaces woke up to newly paved roads, trucks rumbling through day and night, and water taps that started to smell funny. Solastalgia is a yearning for home…when you’re quite literally standing in your home. But, for whatever reason, you can’t recognize it anymore. It’s hard to imagine a more disorienting feeling - one that leaves you hopelessly lost and desperately searching for the place you’re already in.

I think this “solastalgia” phenomenon is something we’re all feeling to one degree or another right now. And it’s no surprise that it’s making us move. People are fleeing to rentals in Maine and summer homes on the water. We’re packing up condos in the city and moving to the burbs, claiming a need for more square footage and a proper yard. And all the reasons we give for our movements are true - fresh air and space to run and an outdoor area to work from are wonderful. Those are all things we choose to run towards.

The truth I don’t like to admit very often is that the feeling that’s been building in me - yes, since March, but really since late last year - is a feeling that makes me want to run away. I’ve loved Boston my whole life. I’ve moved away multiple times, certain I wanted to be somewhere else, only to find myself back inside a Logan terminal teeming with Dunkin’ cups and Sox caps and horrendous accents, thinking: thank god I’m home.

“Home” is a feeling I’ve had a hard time finding for a while. So much about the city around me is the same - the gleaming buildings in the Seaport. The boardwalk along the water in front of the Children’s Museum. The Equinox I used to work out at next to the movie theater I used to go to next to the Away store that sells business travel suitcases, which I used to need. Everything looks exactly the same. But it feels like…well, like not much of anything.

I pop over to my friends’ houses in Eastie or down on the Cape when I want to feel the things that I’ve always associated with home: calm enough to enjoy a meal, relaxed and clear-headed enough to work for long stretches of time. I like the feeling of running along the beach in Cotuit, past grey shingled houses and huge rhododendrons. It reminds me of being in Chatham with my grandparents when I was little. I’ve been getting up at 4:25 to go rowing with my friend in his ocean shell on mornings when swells are low and the wind is calm enough for us to get from Manchester to Marblehead and back again. It’s nice to be up on the North Shore, rowing by beaches and towns and waterfronts that I remember visiting as a kid. I sat on a bench with my dad last week at Brooksby Farm, where we used to pick apples. I felt lousy getting in the car to drive up there and a lot better by the time I left. But I don’t walk outside in my neighborhood very much anymore. I feel myself avoiding the boathouse. Sometimes I need to take deep breaths to be able to keep sitting inside the four walls I remember being so excited to choose as my first real home three and a half years ago. It can feel really hard to sit here.

I’ve recently been back in touch with a couple friends I thought I’d lost a decade or more ago. One is a friend from college who’s been feeling pretty trapped and alone since moving back to Boston - I’m so glad he said something out loud. We’re going to go for a walk at lunch today and I couldn’t be more pumped to see him. And one is the very, very best friend I had growing up. She’s back in Massachusetts for the first time since leaving to go to college in California. We saw each other last week for the first time in twenty years. We talked and laughed and ate all her sister’s food for six hours like no time had passed. She’s been going through a really hard time - I’m so glad she said something out loud.

So I decided to follow their lead and say out loud that wow - this has been a really hard time. I miss home. I wish I knew where to find it. I wish my reason for wanting to move somewhere - anywhere - wasn’t that it feels so hard to stay put where I am. It’s been really easy to start feeling really low. But when I do, I try to bring my mind back to something my friend Laura said last week. She said the thing about a dark place is that it’s either a cave or a tunnel. The only difference between the two is whether or not you keep digging through. So maybe, at least for right now, it doesn’t really matter what’s motivating us. Fear or ambition. Desperation or hope. Dogged determination or a lack of options. No matter what combination of feelings is driving us, the thing that matters most is the one job we have to do: just keep moving.