The place you call remote may be the center of somebody’s daily world.

Remote is a word about your own position, not about the place itself. Everywhere is the middle of somewhere for the people who live there, with its own shops, routes, arguments and centre of gravity. It is a habit of speech, mostly harmless, until it becomes a habit of thought about whose life counts as ordinary.

Listen for that word in your own conversation this week, and try swapping it for the actual distance or the actual name. When you meet someone from a place you would have called remote, ask what a normal Tuesday looks like there.