I've been deceptively blessed. You see, my parents have been living abroad off and on since I was in college. Be it South America or Europe. It has afforded me a beautiful chance to travel to see them. Whenever I tell people that they live in London currently, there is a repetitive response: "Wow, that's so cool! You are so lucky." Yes, lucky to get to travel for holidays. Lucky to see the world. I don't deny this. But what is the point of traveling? Why do we love it so?
I recently returned from a belated Christmas sojourn to London and Barcelona. A transformative visit, as I fell madly in love with the latter. As I walked the gorgeous streets of Modernisma, I couldn't help but draw comparisons between Gaudi's romantic city of the past to Hannah's current city of the present. Barcelona has a warf I liken to a less cloying version of Navy Pier. A shopping district eerily similar to The Mag Mile. A sense of being the latchkey kid city when far more popular vestiges reside so close. It was Chicago with a different language, and a closer proximity to prawns.
Whenever I mark the end of these fantastic journeys I've had of late, there's an unmistakeable sense of inferiority upon my return. I slip back into the motions. I go back to work. I eat my regular doldrum diet. I wake up knowing exactly where I am without that moment of fear when my eyes open in an unrecognizable habitation.
But working in a Chicago tourist's wet dream of cuisine, I've realized something. My city is just as exotic and fantastical as any other in the world. So why do I feel empty when I return?
We have a problem. As people. We so very rarely allow ourselves to live in the moment. Our lives are peppered with the unreal expectations of our future goals and plans, while simultaneously harping on the glory of our pasts. For further proof, look at the abundance of nostalgic lists on websites devoted to the 90s. A decade that when lived, felt like little more than the mundanity of getting from point A to point B. But twenty years later, we look back with a fondness and an insatiable craving for yesteryear. Yet it proved nothing more than life.
Why do we refuse to live in our present? Because our present contains every waking moment. We can't cut out the bull shit. Where our past memories work as a filter, for the brain - regardless of its magnificence - can only hold so much. And the future only contains the ideas we pray and hope for. There are few people out there who look at their future goal of becoming famous and think about the days when work slows. When the current love of their life starts growing distant. When it's difficult to cook yourself the healthy alternative to ordering Chinese food off Grubhub and binge watching Breaking Bad because it's a little too difficult to manipulate yourself off the couch that Saturday.
The present can never be satisfying when we live so deeply in our past memories and our future hopes. Even if there truly is beauty that surrounds the every day. Because the present is only how it is because of the life we led. And the future is only possible if we lay the building blocks in the now. Just as I look at Barcelona as a future desirable inhabitance, it will one day become the norm. And it will become boring. Because the present is boring. It contains every waking moment. It doesn't have the allowance of editing.
