Letter to John Steinbeck

Dear Mr. Steinbeck,

Of your travels through the Monterey Peninsula, you wrote, "The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me" (205). I particularly liked this insight, because I think it highlights something I've always known to be true but never though specifically about: the way change is so closely tied to a place. Of course people change. We grow up, we find new interests, we make new friends. But, as you pointed out, people don't change without any influence; no one exists in a vacuum. People change with their surroundings, and I think this is an important distinction. Maybe that's why travel is so influential--it gives you a new surrounding with which to change. 

When I reflect on my own life, it makes sense that I've changed with the places I've lived. I've moved multiple times, and at times I've found it difficult to relate to my friends in my former towns. This isn't because we're fundamentally different people; instead, it's always seemed to be more of a result of our different styles of interacting and different senses of humor. Though we still get along for the same reasons we always have--we're kind and easy-going people who can have fun together--it sometimes feels that we don't click in the way we used to, because I've adopted a way of speaking and joking and relating to others that is acceptable in my new home town but not in my old one. And I too get confused and frustrated when something changes in my absence. I'm well aware that my life continues when I leave a place, but sometimes forget that everyone else's lives continue also. When I go home during breaks, I expect my sister to be 10, just as she was when I left home after high school, and am always surprised when she's 13, even though I'm fully aware that three years have passed in my life. It's so easy to forget that time passes everywhere at the same speed.

I appreciated your insights on change, memory, and home in this passage, and enjoyed your travels and writing as a whole. Thank you so much for a wonderful read!

Best,

Devon