But the nostalgia produced by changes in physical space, whether personal or business-related, has an emotional weight that is not given due attention
SANTO DOMINGO– During a move, someone asks about boxes to store documents, the internet billing cycle end date, whether the new parking lot has enough spaces, or where the sun shines most intensely in the new location.
But nobody asks what happened to the little group that formed every morning around the coffee maker, that ten-minute ritual that wasn't on any schedule but that sustained, without anyone knowing it, a good part of the office's morale.
That coffee, that moment, isn't packed away. It stays at the old address, and with it something that no transfer sheet can account for.
In a family that moves, the same thing happens, only there, someone cries in front of the empty house, someone takes one last walk through the rooms before handing over the keys, someone stares at the mark left by a painting that was on the wall for fifteen years.
That's called grief. The other thing—the office move, the change of headquarters, the merger that rearranges everything down to the desk—almost never is. And yet the body doesn't distinguish between the two as well as is commonly believed.
Dominican psychologist Leyshy Cabrera describes it in a way that might make any human resources department uncomfortable: when something with a built-in attachment disappears, there is a real drop in the person's vital energy.
For a child changing schools, this translates into lower grades. For an adult changing offices, it could translate into a drop in productivity, which is later explained away with any excuse except the real one.
Spanish psychiatrist Joseba Achotegui spent years documenting something similar in people who migrated from one country to another: it is not just one loss that is experienced, it is seven at once: family, language, culture, land, status, group of belonging, even the feeling of physical security.
No one crosses an ocean to change office floors, but viewed on a smaller scale, symbolic status is lost when the new office is smaller, even if business is better. A sense of belonging is lost when the team that used to sit together is separated by a different layout. And nobody pays for that.
What distinguishes a well-managed move from a poorly managed one is not the logistics, any moving company can handle that, but whether someone gave themselves permission to close something down before opening the new one.
Psychologist Constantine Sedikides found, after years of studying nostalgia, that missing what is left behind does not paralyze anyone: on the contrary, it is what gives people more clarity about where they want to go next.
What is paralyzing, however, is pretending there's nothing to miss. But nostalgia lingers in the new office like a piece of furniture no one remembers buying.
Many people change their mailing address constantly, both personally and for business. The strange thing isn't moving, but that we continue to act as if it costs nothing.
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