Habitual? Possibly.

Miami: My place of habitDe Botton’s chapter “On Habit” was a surprisingly good read (I tend to have a bit of a bias on school assigned readings so I admittedly wasn’t expecting much). De Botton’s knack for capturing the reader’s attention while incorporating anecdotes and stories, along with his own personal experiences to create a rich and vivid tale full of incredible visual imagery, never ceases to incite my attention span. From his picturesque description of detail, such as “azure skies and giant sea anemones”, to his wit and sense of despair over things he mentions such as “funereal” skies, one can’t help but feel as if they are beside De Botton, experiencing the same emotions and seeing things through his eyes. What most fascinates me about De Botton’s writings however is what an incredible amount of knowledge he has in the realm of stories (or possibly, the amount of research he did to find these little anecdotal tales), and how he manages to weave them in so seamlessly to illustrate his points, such as his story about de Maistre.

De Botton further expands on his ideas about travel by saying that we as travelers have a sense of receptivity, meaning that (most of us) approach new places that we visit with a large sense of humility, and without assumption (though this is VERY arguable in my opinion), waiting to experience these new cultures and locales by irritating locals with our touristy ways and strange fascination with the most miniscule of things that the locals pay no attention to. Even more fascinating however, is how De Botton likens our home mentality and states how we have lowered expectations to our familiar surroundings, because it has become a part of our daily habits and routine. De Botton states that we are more “settled in our expectations”, and believe that we know all there is to know about our surroundings simply because of living there for an extended period of time, and how we find it hard to believe that anything new could occur somewhere we’ve been living for such a long period of time. De Botton states that because we have been there for so long, “we have become habituated and therefore blind to it.” I couldn’t help but relate to this, as I am from Miami, Florida originally (where everyone goes to vacation, etc.), everyone is always fascinated by that fact, when all I can do is complain as to how much I hate it and how its always the same. To an extent that is true, but for a traveler who has never been, I’d be dead wrong.

Location