Stop. Wait. Smell...

“We residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little- handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get ‘done’ or ‘through’ and go on somewhere else” (Forster 60).

Sometimes I feel I’m living a double life here. On one day I am completely and unashamedly the tourist with my “things to do” list in hand and the ambition to complete them all before this semester is over. The next day I say to myself, I want to be immersed in this city- no plans, no agendas, certainly no lists. An odd predicament considering the place I have called “home” the last two years is one of the tourist hotspots of the world; our very own New York City. And I’d like to think of myself as “resident” enough to resonate with the above quote as I passed by NYC tourists every day.

After almost 6 weeks here, I think I can comfortably say that I’m an “almost resident” but probably better termed “pseudo-tourist.” So having acknowledged the tourist within me…

As I was reading A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, I came across a lovely character, Miss Lavish. Having agreed to take the main character Lucy Honeychurch along with her to visit Santa Croce, she exclaimed, “Lost! Lost! My dear Miss Lucy… we have taken a wrong turning… What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is what I call an adventure” (Forster 18). Refusing to let Lucy consult her traveler’s guide, Miss Lavish simply embraces the spontaneity of the moment and blazes onward. Lucy, on the other hand, grows increasingly frazzled and is not at all happy with the situation. I found myself personally connecting with Lucy, but wishing I was more like Miss Lavish. My tendency is to have set goals and know how to reach them which makes the process in reaching the goal, stopping long enough to smell the roses, a little bit unnerving.

Little by little, I’m learning how to leave my “Baedeker” home (actually, I didn’t even come to Italy with any guide books! Quite a step for me actually…) and just go with the flow. In the process, my eyes are becoming a little bit more opened to the small things I would have otherwise missed had I been so focused on the end result.

Besides… at the end of the day, as a very wise woman once said, “You can do no great things, just small things with great love” (Mother Theresa). So rather than focusing on checking off that list of mine and having “one anxiety to get ‘done’ or ‘through’ and go on somewhere else,” I think I’ll slow down a bit… Invest in the friendships I’ve made here… Smell some roses.