The examined relationship with place

To examine your relationship with the place you live is to ask: do I know this place — its history, its weather, its birds and soils, the names of its trees? Do I belong to it as much as it belongs to me? Most of us, Nasreddin would observe, know the name of the town and almost nothing else about it — which is a kind of residency without relationship, and a poorer life than the address would suggest.