My sister and I talked about her moving to the United States in order to live closer to her son. Humans have a long history of migration, except she needs the courage to leave behind the old and adapt to the new. I mentioned to her that her son first moved to his current city in 2011 in his early 20s and stayed there till now.
I once told the young man, "The United States is so big and diverse. Why not try some different places and enrich your life experiences while you are young."
He said he liked this place very much. Perhaps you will like other places once you go there. You won't know until you try. You can always move back if you want to. I moved from Texas to Ohio to Indiana to Virginia to Kansas to New Jersey to New York.
The saying 故土难离 (gù tǔ nán lí) describes one's attachment to and reluctance to leave a place where one has lived for a long time. It captures the emotional and psychological challenges in leaving one's homeland and exploring new opportunities elsewhere, and the difficult choice between stepping out of the comfort of the familiar and embracing the new and the unknown. I'm sure the sentiment resonates with many people who grapple with similar choice.
Looking back at the migration history of my family, I feel grateful for my parents who had the courage and resilience to leave their hometowns, the remote mountainous villages of Shanxi and Hebei province. Both of them were teenagers when they left home. Their adventurous spirit is very admirable. My two uncles on both sides of my parents stayed behind and didn’t do as great as my parents.
You can find the same themes that we value so much in life: attachment, courage, resilience, adventure, and personal growth inherent in the great experience of human migration and exploration.