Geography is four-dimensional | Derek Sivers

Forty years ago, a family moved from India to Canada, and raised their children with “Indian values”.<br>When those children visited India last year, the locals laughed at their outdated beliefs.<br>What their family had said were facts were just a perspective from 1980 .

Twenty years ago, I lived in Los Angeles.<br>Talking with an old friend that’s still there, I said it’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived, and why.<br>She said, “Oh wow. You haven’t been here in a while. It’s not like that anymore. ”<br>She said my description was like looking at an old photo from 1999.

Last year I went to China and loved it.<br>So clean, polite, efficient, and all-around nice.<br>A German friend said I’m crazy because “China is filthy, rude, noisy, and awful - with everyone spitting and pushing.”<br>I asked when he was there, and he said 2002 .<br>Ah!<br>But that place is long gone.<br>It’s not like that anymore.

When someone speaks of a place, you have to ask, “When?”

Geography is four-dimensional.<br>You can’t know a place - only a place as it was at a time.<br>Where is bound to when.

Unless you are in a place right now, you can only speak of it in past-tense.

I was born in America, but the last year I lived there, George Bush was president.<br>So I’m not from the current place, though it has the same name.

Like Doc stepping out of a time machine.<br>“I’m from here, but not this here!”

I used to describe myself as American, but that’s becoming less true with time.<br>I’m from the America of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

But that place is long gone.<br>It’s not like that anymore.