Geography is four-dimensional | Derek Sivers

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When those children visited India last year, the locals laughed at their outdated beliefs.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

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

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

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

Geography is four-dimensional.
You can’t know a place – only a place as it was at a time.
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.
So I’m not from the current place, though it has the same name.

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

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

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