What Makes Places Meaningful?

 When asked about the most meaningful places in our lives, a couple of places automatically come to mind. Whether it be the place you call home, a place where a loved one lives, or a place in your community, we all have those special places where meaning lies. 


I feel that a multitude of reasons can lead to making a place meaningful, but one that stands out to me is the time we spend there. If we spend time there doing things we love, then we tend to create better connections to those places. I hate to use this example, but kids nowadays don’t like going to church because they are usually bored and hot in their church outfits. This sadly creates a bad connection to the actual place itself and it’s because they sadly don’t enjoy the time they spend there. On the flip side, kids tend to have a deeper connection to their favorite cousins house who they spend time hanging out with and playing with. Whether that be playing video games and having sleepovers, it allows them to create a deeper connection with that place which makes it all the more meaningful. 


I also believe that the care we put into that place also makes it all the more meaningful. I feel that if we spend time taking care of a place, we create a meaningful connection with that place. When you grow up, we are taught that when we work for something, it tends to mean more. Lots of time getting a job and making your own money and then buying something adds value. I believe that when we spend time caretaking the land, we create a deeper connection. For instance, my dad had a vegetable garden in our yard years ago. He would go out everyday and tend to it; pulling weeds, watering the plants, and getting rid of the slugs that would eat the plants. I found that he actually created a special connection to that garden and was actually quite sad when he had to get rid of it. He added meaning to that garden, and it showed in the care and the time that he spent and gave to that garden. He still talks about it sometimes and how he wish he had the time to get it back. 

    

These, to me, are just some of the ways that we can add meaning to a place. It all stems from the love that we feel when we are in that place, and the love that we can give back to that meaningful place. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID Time Loss

Image
       I feel that at some point, everyone has been affected by COVID-19 in some way. Whether it was not being able to see friends and family for a long duration of time, or family members and close friends getting sick, or even you yourself, we all have at some point been affected by COVID.      When I think about COVID, I think about the time loss and the memories that were never made due to the fact that we lost out on so much due to the pandemic. Something that immediately came to mind was the loss of my junior season of football in high school.      I played football since my seventh grade year, so I was not one of those kids that had been playing since they learned to walk. Because of the horrible coaching staff for those first two years, I really only began to learn and develop during my freshman year. So for me, it really felt like I had an opportunity to really learn and grow during my four years of high school ball, which meant...
Read more

Next Major Assessment

 I find that one of the best things that I did to help myself for this Paper 2 was writing out and structuring my paper. Usually when I write my papers, I kind of wing it, but with an idea of my quotes and my sources that I want to use. However, this paper was a little bit more challenging for me, so I took the time to write out my paper to help myself structure and see it all planned out. I find that the benefit of writing out and structuring my paper was being able to make sure that the points flowed better. It also helped me to solidify my points and to make sure that I wasn’t getting mixed up when writing. This is something that I highly recommend and something that I am definitely going to do when I start my next major paper. 
Read more

Exit Post

 I continue to find renewable energy and the problem with the lack thereof to be the most interesting sustainability and resource issue. I feel that Hawaii has taken the step in the right direction by installing the wind turbines about a decade ago, but there is so much we can do with the vast abundance of resources that are at our disposal (i.e. wind, solar, and hydro power). I feel that looking towards this paper, I am confident that I will be writing about the fact that climate change, and the quest to rely on renewable energy, is the biggest global issue that we face today.  Sitting in class and looking at interesting facts that had to do with renewable energy was fascinating. You get to learn about how other countries are currently making the push to become more renewable energy reliable, and that they have increase their reliance on things like solar power and wind turbines. China, for instance, has huge megawatt factories that they store solar power in. Iceland has been...
Read more