Some places you're supposed to hate forever.

My commute to work used to take close to two hours, and it would all start at Somerset train station. The first stop on the line. Two trains, two buses, and it all started here.

I hated this place. The dirty concrete platform. The fluorescent lights buzzing in the pre-dawn darkness. The way the wind cut through the shelter, especially in the impossibly cold Canadian winter. For three years I hated most mornings. And I hated that place twice a day, every season.

One morning, as I was arriving at the platform during one of the coldest blizzards of the year, I remember looking at the sky and noticing the snow in its dancing descent. Big snowflakes plummeting, smaller ones floating around. The sun was barely peeking through the clouds and I felt something unexpected. I felt at home.

Somehow, for the first time in three years, familiarity transformed hatred into warmth. And that was enough to feel like I belonged. Have you ever felt this way?

The mere exposure effect explains why we grow to like what we encounter repeatedly. This psychological phenomenon develops affection for the familiar below our awareness, even when we're not consciously paying attention.

Our brains interpret frequency as safety. What appears often must be benign, our neural wiring suggests. This cognitive shortcut once protected us from genuine threats, helping us distinguish safe from dangerous. Now it shapes everything from our musical taste to our political views.

The effect doesn't require conscious recognition. Studies show we develop preferences for shapes, sounds, and faces we've seen before, even when we don't remember the initial exposure. Our unconscious mind is constantly cataloging and favoring the familiar. The song that annoyed you initially becomes tolerable, then pleasant, then a favorite. The colleague who seemed difficult gradually feels easier to work with.

But familiarity can easily become a prison. We gravitate toward what feels known, even when it no longer serves us. The job that once excited us becomes comfortable through repetition. The relationship patterns we know feel safer than the unknown alternatives we might need.

The foods we ate as children taste like home. The neighborhoods we grew up in feel right in ways we can't articulate. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are become more true through telling. What feels like authentic preference might simply be the accumulated weight of exposure.

If repeated exposure shapes preference, then conscious exposure might reshape it.

Celebrate what you've grown to love through repetition. The coffee shop that once felt intimidating but now feels yours. The neighborhood that felt foreign but now feels like home. These transformations didn't happen through logic, they happened through presence.

Consider what you might be dismissing. That genre of music that sounds wrong. The perspective that feels uncomfortable. The activity that seems intimidating. The person whose worldview challenges yours.

Deliberately expose yourself to unfamiliarity. Do it once, do it again. Let repetition soften the edges of resistance. What's one preference you have that might just be familiarity in disguise? And what's one thing you've written off too quickly that deserves another chance?

Sometimes the places we resist become the places we belong, if only we return enough times.