Location Disassociation

I was talking to Jana about being in a mall in the US and that feeling you get when you think you are somewhere else...in her case, from their being so many Latinos in the mall, she felt at that time she was back in Tegucigalpa.

I was surprised to see after searching the internet, that there was no term coined for when this happens.  At least...not that I could find in a Google search a few times with different phrases and ideas.

So we came up with this term, "location disassociation", to try to encapsulate that feeling...when you are somewhere, but you feel like you are somewhere else.

It seems natural to me, no matter where you are from.  It is a way of coping with what you are seeing to make it make sense, or create familiarity.  When groups are driving through parts of Honduras and they say "This reminds me of Texas...Tennessee...Florida...Germany...even Hawaii"...or, well, you get the idea.

Normally I think of this as being a good thing, with a good context.  Sometimes of course, we also make comparisons of places and the feelings they give us in not a good way as well...but mostly I am making this connection in the "positive" sense...the kind that makes you smile but also feel a bit weird.

Sometimes it is a sense of nostalgia or just the great feat of two different places all of the sudden seeming to be the same place, sharing values, people, terrain, smells, etc. that you had previously not thought possible.

We have all been there, right?   Standing in a city center and instantly feeling like you are a hundred, or thousand miles away?  You stop, take a look around...eyes darting, then smile, and keep moving?

Let me know a time or two this has happened to you...not sure how, but maybe we can all grow from the experience.