it's all in the mind

who needs a suitcase to travel?

Every morning at 9:57 my dinky cell phone plays a little jingle to wake me up from my sweaty sleep in a stuffy room. I always hit snooze twice, so at 10:03 I roll out of bed to get dressed in the dark as my roommate continues to sleep. I have the routine down. I open up one shutter to get dressed, close it, and then proceed to open another shutter on the other side of the room to eat breakfast. I pick and choose what books I feel like carrying to school that day (I always try to carry as few things as possible). I grab my i-pod and start rocking out down the streets on my 30-minute walk to school. I zig-zag my way to Avenida Charcas and remain on that street the rest of the way to school. I walk down that street to and from school everyday. I couldn’t tell you a single store name on that street. I have clearly lost what De Botton calls the “travel mindset.” After my first stroll down Charcas, I stopped noticing the small details. I no longer paid attention to the people drinking coffee at the cafes or the flowers and fruits being sold along the street. My main focus quickly became what song should I listen to next as I get to school AS FAST AS I CAN.

I like the “travel mindset” theory. “The notion that the pleasure we derive from a journey may be more dependent on the mind-set we travel with than on the destination we travel to,” describes De Botton. I find this very true. If I wanted, I could take a walk down my driveway and notice things in nature that I had never noticed before. I could be entranced by my own land if I wanted to. Yet I always zoom through to get somewhere, either home or elsewhere. De Botton suggests that a travel mindset could consist of being receptive. I could find as many interesting things walking from my bed to the front door of my host family’s apartment as walking down Charcas street depending on how receptive and open my mind was. If I was in an explorative mode, anywhere could be foreign.

Departure day is in less than three weeks. I need to bring myself back to my original mindset that I had upon arrival in Buenos Aires. I can only be a tourist here for so much longer. I need to stop taking it all for granted as I storm to and from class. I want to continue to see and do as much as I can before I go, whether it is walking more slowly around the city or visiting museums. My time here is all up to me. I can either breeze through it or take the time to smell the roses. 

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