We feel a little uncomfortable, don’t we? Unknown surroundings make us feel a little out of sorts, and the pressures of life make even very familiar things like the first sip of a fresh steaming coffee hard to enjoy. At times like this, our everyday surroundings can seem unfamiliar and we can even start to feel a little paranoid that we don’t belong anywhere. It’s at time like these that we return to those places to which we make almost exclusively happy associations. Those sunlit fields where we ran as a child in the ravine behind our parents’ place – where when we go as an adult, the place may seem smaller; the ravine which was a wilderness to be explored for hours and hours when we were eight years old might seem a little cramped – the houses tight on either side, the trees a little weather-beaten. However, the magic of the place remains, doesn’t it? That is if you allow yourself to feel it. Not through the hardened eye of jade and experience, but through the open and searching gaze of your youth. That ease, that alertness is an natural feeling, the way we are before categories and class and consumption converts our minds into endless spreadsheets full of budget lines and glossy magazines full of the photoshopped and the outrageous. No, the ease of return to a happy place is a human thing – we feel our bodies amply, we sense the sunlight streaming through eyes into our minds and have an energizing, restorative effect on our spirits and hearts. You can have the same feeling in a favourite hotel or restaurant – a place where you have gone to linger quietly and alone over dinner, after heartbreak or betrayal. A place to hide with posters whose frayed edges are as crisp in the theatre of your memories as the most vivid mountain peak shattering a cloudless blue sky sharpened by clear, fall sunlight. Yes, those places are treasures to be shared with only the trusted few – those whom you know will not defile them, or try to steal them from you by re-framing them from their perspective. No, when you are invited to someone else’s happy places – a respectful quiet and smile is necessary: put yourself aside and try to learn the texture of your friend’s experiences that have brought him or her back to here, time and again. Generosity of spirit and muffled personal reaction will increase your friend’s trust and allow empathy and sympathy to open your mind.