I am moving for a promotion. Just a couple hours away, not a huge move. I am remaining in the same state, same relative distance from family. I am leaving the area but I will probably be back down the road. Might be back in six months to a year when my contract ends. Up to God not me. People are acting like it is the end, like I will never see them again. It's really not that far away... At least I don't think so.
For context, I live in WA. For our foreign posters WA State is about half the size of Germany and a third the size of France. Bigger than England but smaller than the sum total of the United Kingdom.
I drive a couple hours every other week to visit my family. Once upon a time a lot of my friends and family made similar drives to visit each other but this seems to have died post covid. Am I a modern outlier, or do people just not travel anymore? Even to visit friends or family? Is this just a byproduct of the Covid lockdown, increased expensiveness of America and anti social nature of this country (the Bowling Alone phenomenon)?
As was already posted, much of this has to do with growing up and having your own life to deal with. Additionally, however, we've created a culture of the spiritual 15-minute-city already, which is why the physical idea is pushed so heavily these days. The importance of Family and family gatherings are minimized, many young people don't know how to drive, and the idea of "effort for payoff" is nonexistent. We live in an intolerable TikTok'd society of second-long attention spans, why would you assume someone wants to spend hours on a road to see someone they're obligated by blood to acknowledge?