Adapting to Carpets

A couple weeks ago, my family went on vacation to Florida (it was great). We stayed in a condo there, and over the course of the week--and through the process of being littered with toys and books and stuffed animals--it felt sort of like home. After our week in sunny paradise, we came back to our real home. And it felt...not like home. My husband and I both noticed right away that it felt different. Bare somehow, or empty, or just a little off. After a little while, we were able to identify that the problem was that our house wasn't carpeted. Of course, our house has never been carpeted. But apparently that one week of wall-to-wall carpeting in our little Florida condo was enough to re-train our minds to see non-carpeting as empty, bare, wrong. We adjusted back quickly enough, and now our floors just look like floors again. But it got me thinking how quickly we adapt to things, how easy it is for us to be taught that something is acceptable, desirable, even mandatory. What other things in life have I adapted to? What do I think I need to own, to wear, to believe just to be normal? And what process do I go through to examine those adaptations, what trips do I take--should I take--to consider what's really essential? Just musings from my comfortable, "necessity"-filled existence.