Different mindsets: Distances and times

I find it fascinating how differently people perceive distances and times.

In some cases, it’s a question of the rural-urban divide. Camrose, AB, where we lived prior to moving to NB, is host to the University of Alberta Augustana Campus. We got to be good friends with the Dean at that time and his wife. As you may know, the University of Alberta North (main) Campus is located in Edmonton, a little more than an hour away from Camrose. From time to time, the Dean naturally had reasons to meet with people from there.

He often remarked how it must have seemed to those people that Highway 21 from Edmonton to Camrose was somehow longer than Highway 21 from Camrose to Edmonton, since they always thought it better that he drive to Edmonton rather than they drive to Camrose. Go figure.

Here in NB, both urban and rural people perceive distances very differently than we did living in rural Alberta. Coming from there, my wife and I thought nothing of driving an hour to do something or see someone, but it seems that people here don’t see it quite that way.

I worked with a fellow (you know who you are!) who thought that an hour’s drive from his home to see us here in Pointe-Sapin may as well have been an excursion across the continent.

Covid, of course, got in the way of person-to-person meetings, which would have saved the Dean a lot of time and effort, had it occurred while he was in office. And now, with gas prices being what they are, our decisions to go anywhere at all are tempered even further.

Regardless, as the warning goes, objects in your mirror – and your windshield – are closer than they seem!