“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you do about relationships?” Since I started splitting my year between Mexico City, London, and Hong Kong, it has become one of the questions I’m asked most. When I first started living this way, people described it as nomadic. The word never sat right with me. Nomads keep moving on; I return to the same three cities, the same friends, and the same rhythm every year. It took time to find language that described what I was actually doing, and when I landed on seasonal migration something shifted. That shift has a basis in research. Cognitive scientists have long argued that the language shapes how we think. Lera Boroditsky of UC San Diego studied the Kuuk Thaayorre, an Aboriginal community in northern Australia whose language uses compass directions instead of left and right (you might say there’s an ant on your southwest leg). As a result, those people stay oriented in a way most of us never do. The words available to us inform what we …