Finding novelty in a world of habit

The world outside my house is currently blanketed in snow, a monochrome world of white interrupted only by the dark, wet trunks of trees, the red brick of chimneys, the occasional green of shrubs poking through. The world outside my windows is the same as it was yesterday, and yet, it’s totally different to my eyes.

Where I live snow is a novelty. One or maybe two days a year it actually snows. When it does it remakes the world. It also makes me look at what is, for all intents and purposes, the same world, as something utterly new.

I could, on any given morning get up and walk through the neighborhood, down to the main street and get a cup of coffee at one of several coffee shops. I usually don’t. But throw a little snow on the world — a little novelty — and it’s the first thing I think of doing. The world is different, throw out the habits and do something new.

The snow converted the ordinary to something more, at bit like waking up in a foreign land, but without having to go through any security-related genital groping. Halfway to the coffee shop I noticed I was not alone. Groups of people were approaching from every nearby neighborhood, some carrying sleds or trash can lids, some with dogs and children in tow.

The snow reminded me of something very simple — its not really travel that we’re after, it’s novelty. Something that can transform the world we see into something we feel we haven’t seen before.

Travel is the sledgehammer of novelty — of course everything is novel when you’re somewhere new — but to find novelty when everything around you is habit takes a bit more work. Sometimes the weather gives you a little help, sometimes you have to do it on your own.