​If you have happened to move multiple times in the course of your life, you’ve likely expanded your view on how the world works. The nuances of different cultures -- whether in the U.S. or overseas somewhere -- stands out. We’re not homogeneous. Yet we have distinct commonalities from country to country.
 
A long-time friend from high school and college spurred this column. He said something to the effect, “You should write about how your moves have affected you.” He focused on the positive things, and reinforced the importance of sharing broadly how residing in different locations has grown my outlook on the world.
 
He and I met in Kankakee, IL, a blue collar town, just starting to experience the declines of the manufacturing industry in the 1970s. We attended the University of Illinois together, and since graduating and beginning our careers, I’ve lived in Ottawa, IL, Milwaukee, Washington, D.C. and Maryland suburbs, Columbus, NE, Kennett Square, PA, Grapevine, TX and Hartland, WI.
 
As best I can recollect, he has lived in Denver and returned to Kankakee, with a stint or two elsewhere, though I can’t remember where those were exactly. It’s been a long, thoughtful and fruitful journey for both of us.
 
In terms of what I’ve learned, the word “journey” stands out. Beyond traveling to new locations, which exposes you to a host of new experiences, people, cities, towns, scenery, architecture and landscape, you receive the gift of a diverse path in life – the journey itself. We all have a journey. Some are broader, some take you to more new locations, but the actual “living through” each new experience is hugely important in terms of the benefits of living in new places.
 
But I think my good friend was looking for more in this column. I think he was digging into specific details. I’ll give it a shot.
 
One big plus is making new friends. Most of us tend to keep friends we’ve made earlier in life. Moving around introduces you to people, gets you out of a comfort zone, forces you to adjust. Whether you need that push or not, you make good friends if you keep yourself open as a human.
 
You must adjust when you move. This is good. Life is not stagnant. You cannot live in the past. Appreciate the past, enjoy the memories, and create new ones.
 
You gain new insights with each move. Your views are altered, you probably become smarter (though this could be debated depending on how you take new information into your system and assimilate it).
 
You grow in tolerance and compassion. Exposed to others who perhaps don’t think the way you do, you are forced (more than you would be if you remained locationally in place) to adjust, listen, think, challenge yourself. I believe this makes you a broader human being, coming to terms with how every person you meet has a unique background and story to tell, influenced by events you hadn’t considered.
 
There is enrichment – historically and personally. Through the diversity of the people you encounter, you raise your awareness of life and situational circumstances affecting others.
 
Accents, local and regional cultures make sense. “Y’all” is synonymous with the south. When you hear it every day, it becomes part of you.

A “bubbler” is a water fountain in Wisconsin. Who would have known if you hadn’t lived there? Not me.
 
You grow in respect. You develop passion and compassion for things you’d never thought about.
 
I hope I captured most of my buddy’s message here. Either way, I’m confident I will hear quickly from him after he reads this and enriches me with part of his journey.

​There are a lot of antique and consignment stores throughout Wisconsin. They present very specific challenges to owners when it comes to protecting their merchandise.
 
As an owner, you may think putting in an alarm system protects you against break-ins. It does.
 
You may also believe cameras protect you against shoplifters and employee theft. They do.
 
But do you consider these systems in tandem (alarm and video)? Maybe, maybe not.
 
Due to the unique layouts and the types of wares displayed in antique and consignment stores, H&S Protection recommends you install a combination of both to best protect your premises and assets.
 
Here’s why: Antique and consignment stores typically house trinket-type items, and the stores themselves are often cramped and hard to navigate. This presents specific security issues.
 
As an owner or someone displaying wares on consignment, you want an eye kept in these nooks and crannies. That means an expert like H&S Protection is a good choice to hire to walk through the store and determine EXACTLY the best placement for security cameras.

Similarly, there could be a side window or door overlooked if you solely place cameras, and ensuring those spots are covered by an alarm system to detect illegal entry would also be necessary. Again, our experts at H&S ask questions, discuss your concerns and point out issues for your consideration.
 
It’s frequently a good idea to have alarm AND cameras systems in place for your antique or consignment store. Give H&S a call to set up a meeting to see how we can help with your full security needs. In the Stevens Point area, call 715.344.0727. In southeast Wisconsin, call 262.574.7777.

​Everyone who reads has transformative books in their lives (if you read in-depth, which hopefully you do). Maybe it is an epic historical novel. Perhaps it’s a non-fiction piece.
 
Regardless, the writing moved you. It made you think. You kept some of the message/plot/tips with you LONG after you finished reading. It affected you to the point where you internalized, acted and shared something outside yourself over the years.

That’s what great writing does – takes you to another level. You are better off for having read the book, and in some way it has shaped your view of the world and how to better understand and approach it.
 
Here are a few of mine in no particular order:

• “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” by Stephen Covey: Sharpen the saw and seek first to understand before being understood are two critical lessons that stayed with me over the years. They’ve kept me on top of things, always learning, and listening to recognize where others are coming from.
• “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner: I’ve recommended this novel to more people than I can count, an epic piece of writing about long-term friends, lives well-lived, and that we all must come to terms with people we care about leaving our lives.
• “Living with Change” by Wendell Johnson and Dorothy Mueller: Had this one in a college communications class and it taught me the powerful difference between opinions and facts and to qualify statements regarding how you see/perceive something rather than categorically saying, “This is the way it is.” We all have personal visions of what we see and hear in the world, and you adapt best when you understand those differences and pay attention to others.
• “Ethics” by Harry Stein: As a writer for Esquire magazine many years ago, this compiles his columns on the slippery slope of ethics. He poses dilemmas, then describes how he grapples with the issue based on specific incidents and situations in his life. Brilliant stuff to get you thinking and considering how gray the world is rather than black and white.
• “The Brothers K” by David James Duncan: A Tolstoy-like novel with a baseball theme following a family through the turmoil of the 1960s as the kids come of age and take different paths. Duncan plays with religion and baseball to illuminate how the kids come to terms with conflicts in the era. Very hard to put down after the first 100 pages, and incredibly affecting in how you look at family dynamics afterwards.
• “Passages” by Gail Sheehy: I’ve probably read this book 5-6 times and every time except the last one I came away with new views about my own life and what stage I was going through. The last reading it seemed a bit dated, which is sad for me, because of the challenges it helped me understand in previous readings regarding a stage of life I was going through.
• “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig: This book teaches you to think and solve problems in unique ways. I’ll use this example in my own life: I lived in a group house and the doorknob to my bedroom got stuck repeatedly. I applied what I read in the book to approach this dilemma with a fresh mind, and chose to use my left hand to open the door rather than my right. Bingo. Problem solved. When stuck on something these days, I approach the problem by looking at it from the outside with open eyes. It often works.

What are yours?

​We live in an Era of Chaos. We’ve probably been in this period for four or five years now, perhaps longer. Covid didn’t start it, but it did accentuate it. More instability. Less certainty.
 
One could argue we are in a time of fluctuation. Temperatures go way up. Then they do way down. Climate change is discussed repeatedly, and its salient characteristic is that there’s no stability. We don’t know what to predict.
 
If you talk to anyone past a certain age, let’s say 60 or so, you can get them to go off on “when I was young, it seemed like the weather” (insert your phrase here regarding the amount of snow, rain or cold)…. Someone that age has seen a lot and lived through a lot. Strictly on memory, they have knowledge of what it was like where they grew up, spent their twenties and thirties, and on through their forties and fifties.
 
It's not just weather that puts us in this Era of Chaos. Supply chain issues globally don’t appear like they will be rectified any time quickly. We will be living with varying amounts of the products we were used to get and have times where they are unavailable. We will have to get used to that, adjust, find other ways to source the product or replace it. That will take time. It means instability. People will get frustrated and angry.
 
The top two percent of income earners in the U.S. have benefitted repeatedly financially, probably since the 1970s. That appears to have accelerated. That gap with the rest of the people causes more disruptions – from economic instability for families to the lack of housing (or too costly housing) as the rich buy up two, three, four and five homes, causing an acceleration in prices for everyone else. The rich get richer.
 
Refugees span the globe. The homeless increase in the U.S. People want to find a better, safer place to live. Immigration into the U.S. has been a hot button for decades, perhaps longer. When people are desperate, they leave their homes and look for a better life elsewhere. That’s been going on since we were a tribal species, which, quite frankly, we still are. That’s gonna accelerate as well.
 
Where you live becomes a critical life choice when it comes to finding greater stability in the face of these issues – the changing climate, refugees, income inequality. Many of us will make situational living choices to benefit our families and careers.
 
Out of necessity, I foresee the redevelopment of much of the north’s urban centers in the U.S. which fell apart as our manufacturing facilities moved south, then overseas. Toledo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo and Detroit are all examples of cities that lost thousands, if not millions, of jobs as industrial processes vacated their area or died. They will come back out of necessity because people will recreate through personal innovation livable communities that develop and attract others. That will be a very positive thing over the longer run, the next 25-50 years or so.
 
As we rumble and ramble through these changes, there will be a lot of finger-pointing and ranting (which we’ve been seeing reflected more intensely in our political dialogue the past 15-20 years). Predictability and stability go out the window. Air travel and changing energy prices and technologies reflect these inconsistencies.
The ability to assess, remain flexible and adjust to rapidly changing circumstances is incredibly important for all of us. As my older brother often says, “Batten down the hatches.”

​We’ve lost the power to be surprised.
 
With all the information saturating us – opinions, prognostications and predictions – and hammering away throughout the day, it’s not surprising how hard it is to be surprised any more. What has happened recently where you went to yourself, “Wow, that’s incredible! I had no idea about that!”
 
We lose part of the human experience when we shrug our shoulders as if we’ve heard it all before. Someone survives a horrible bout of cancer. “There have been 1.73 million stories in the news about that the past 37 years.”
 
Someone sails a boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Yawn. “Tell me something new.”
 
A guy walks across the United States, in the process raising $1.17 million for Alzheimer’s research. “Hey, that’s great. I love it. But there are tons of worthy causes in the world and many, many activities people have and will undertake to fund those causes.”

I’m not a cynic. I’m not frowning on do-good contributions.
 
What I’m saying is we’re saturated. And, because we’re saturated, we lose the ability to care or be surprised when something really wild or different occurs.
 
Think about the winter storm report. Last week, I drove from near Milwaukee to the upper peninsula of Michigan to Marquette. All week long, the weather people were beating the storm drums. BONG BONG BONG, “It’s gonna snow. CAREFUL! You don’t want to drive anywhere Friday.”

By early morning Thursday, it was clear there would be ABSOLUTELY NO PRECIPITATION AT ALL any time Friday, nor Saturday for good measure. All your worries were pointless. You could have chosen all week to ignore the weather report and be surprised on Friday during your drive.

We don’t do that. We listen and watch, instead, and in the process are influenced repeatedly to think something is or isn’t about to occur based on what someone projects. That reduces our ability to be surprised or even to share in some of the wonders of the world in which we live.
 
When news comes on the television (or however you choose to receive information), it is often repeated. You see the potential upcoming event. Expectations are created. You imagine what will occur. Whether it doesn’t or does happen the way you expect, what you can count on is that you won’t be surprised because the event/issue has already been talked to death.

The Super Bowl is a phenomenal example of this. Aren’t we all just happy to get to the game so we don’t have to listen to all the announcers talk about it?  “I just want to watch the dang game (and ads)!”
 
Experiencing something truly new is a spectacular feeling. You learn something. You might be challenged. You tend to think about situations differently. The experience molds you and pushes boundaries.
 
We live in a predictive society in so many ways. Rather than experiencing something, we’re told what we’re about to experience.
 
When I bicycled across North America over 40 years ago, I experienced Canada and the United States and all the people, small towns, big cities, weather and terrain that went with those thousands of miles. I chose to eliminate news that summer. I wanted to be “IN” the world, not being told about it.
 
And, oddly enough, I became a predictor. Through the rotation of the earth, the angle and location of the sun, I found I could predict the time of day, usually within 5-10 minutes. Like most predictions, that didn’t really have much value, except it grounded me in each day on when to eat, hit the road or set up camp for the evening.
 
I surprised myself with the predictions. There was power in being surprised.