Going Lyonnais
It’s a difficult transition, living in a foreign land. Leaving one’s home for a vacation
here or a family visit there is nothing; it breaks the monotony of the quotidian and
gives you a chance to look around a bit. But going further, pushing your head
beyond the comfort of a motherland’s borders into an uncomfortably unknown
space is different. You’re forcing yourself outside of one understanding and into a
new one. It’s overwhelming at first.
Things feel bigger. Buildings stand taller. The everyday occupations of those
around you, though simple and similar to what you have seen a thousand times
before, are just different enough that they become fascinating and things can
seem a blur.
Walking, biking, driving, eating, dressing, shopping, speaking… things you never
thought to question are subject to scrutiny when faced with a culture just different
enough that it sees you as the outsider. All the internalized habits and opinions
which protected you at home seem strange now. They are thrust from the
infrared vision of familiarity put under a harsh UV light. A light that exposes
aspects of who you are that you may love or that you may hate or even those
that you stand gaping at as you wonder how such an integral part of what makes
you you could go unnoticed for so long.
You begin to differentiate between what you thought and what you knew. What
was assumed to be true and what you had discerned through careful
observation. Eventually, the strangeness of a place fades as you pass it day after
day. Your brain has made the connections it needed to gain a familiarity, or even
a fondness, for the new place.
If you are fortunate, you come to realize how thrilling it was to explore. How
fulfilling it was to expand your horizons through a altered perception. Your brain
comes to crave the formation of novel experiences so you seek out more and
more. You give up your comfortable sameness for the beautiful and the new.
Suddenly, you’ve gained memories that make your life more interesting. More
memorable.
Your life no longer seems to blur together. Your time seems better spent. Your
life feels longer.
Leaping outwards, you are still you, but a different you.
You gain character.
Stories.
Perspective
You have to push beyond comfort to make discoveries.
Until you do, you’re just the robin that sits in its mother’s nest.
Wings unopened, life half-lived.