When my partner and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii earlier this year, a driver told us about how the island had lost its magic to him. After he spent a couple of years there, he naturally stopped noticing the beauty of the island. He felt wistful about this, and while his intention was to appreciate it more, it took effort on his part. It didn’t come as naturally as it used to, when he was new to the place. I couldn’t believe what he was saying, but as I gave it more thought it made sense—and I realized that I had felt something similar before. 

New York City used to be a magical place to me and my partner. After we moved there over a year and a half ago, the city hasn’t lost its charm, but it definitely takes effort for me to appreciate it. I don’t just spend every day at the Met. I do many chores each week, I see more of its problems, and I know—and have done—what it takes to survive there. It’s no longer magic—it’s skill.

Moving somewhere means taking this risk on the place. It means getting to know it better, and risking it losing its magic. That’s one of the key differences between moving somewhere and just visiting. Hawaii remains a magical place to us, because we’ve only visited—we have never moved there. We’ve only been on vacation; we don’t have to go through the mundanities of everyday life there.

As we visited Tokyo recently, my partner told me something surprising—she definitely didn’t want to move there. “I don’t want to get comfortable with this place because that makes it lose its magic,” she said. It feels special to us, a decision not to move there means there’s a better chance it stays magical to us.

It also means keeping a distance with a place, and deepening our connection with it much more slowly.