Adjacent meanings

It was late. We’d taken a different escalator than earlier and couldn’t find our way to our motorbike in the shopping mall’s parking lot, because rows and rows of bikes just looked like bikes to our tired eyes. We finally sucked it up and went up one level to where the shops were, and navigated from there. It worked, as it was obviously easier to flag the motorbike coming from the original escalator. Anyhow, this feels like common sense but I’ve never put it into words. Your surroundings give where you are more meaning.

My parents’ house is next to a language center. My apartment is in the same building complex as a bank. Those anchor places are where I book my Grab trips now instead of the actual addresses, after failed navigations from both ends. It’s a tiny solution that solves a tiny problem I have.

Someone is someone’s child. Someone is someone’s partner. Someone is someone’s friend. I grew up thinking so strongly about how you should be your own person, but recently it also seems nice to have adjacent meanings.