It’s No Big Deal: My Experience Moving to New York
Hedonic Adaptation and Getting off the Hedonic Treadmill
About a month ago, I moved to New York from Singapore.
The question I get most often, from both friends and friends-to-be is “how’s New York”?
It’s a supposedly innocuous question. But I’ve been struggling to find a satisfactory answer to it.
Something I’ve noticed is that whenever I answer the question of ‘how is XYZ?’, I always have to draw a comparison with something else.
How’s my day going? I compare it to yesterday. How’s my new job going? I compare it to my previous job. The list goes on…
In this case, I find myself having to make a comparison of New York to Singapore to answer the question. i.e. the people and activities are more diverse, or that it’s a less safe and more dirty version of Singapore.
Is making comparisons wrong? Not necessarily, it’s fundamentally human to utilise analogies as a means of communication. By relating something new with something familiar, it makes it easier to convey a foreign concept.
So why haven’t I been satisfied with my answers?
- It’s either too superficial and doesn’t reflect my true opinion
- or I fail to communicate, or more specifically, fail to relate my experiences to others in a way which they can empathise with
As I write this article and look inwards more deeply, I realise that I feel uncomfortable answering the question as I perceive my answers to lack authenticity. And this potentially stems from my inability to distinguish between my feelings and what I’ve been societally conditioned to feel.
Indeed, having the opportunity to live and work abroad for a year, by some external measures is “living the dream”. And you would typically associate this with the opportunity to lead a carefree, indulgent or possibly hedonistic lifestyle. However, I would like to believe that we can, and should all instead choose to define living the dream by our internal measures.
Furthermore, I’ve observed that my baseline happiness has remained somewhat static thus far, it honestly hasn’t been “life-changing”. Hedonic adaptation is true to some extent — we have a baseline level of happiness regardless of what happens to us.
Nevertheless, it’s been a rather interesting learning experience. And maybe by striving to find intrinsically motivated goals, it may even be possible to break out of the hedonic treadmill.
So to end off on a personal note, here’s another attempt at answering how’s New York — I’m struggling not to lose myself, but it’s been the best opportunity to find myself.
