Travel Altered My Sense of Place-Based Personality
By: Nick Keehler
Tags: Withoutborders, Lifestyle, Self, Travel, Outdoors

Travel Altered My Sense of Place-Based Personality

Photo by Agustina Salas on Unsplash

I sit on the balcony of my apartment just North of Kansas City, flipping my attention between reading, writing, and gazing out at the bordering neighborhood across the street.

Nine months ago, I was leaning on the rail of my balcony in a small Andalucían town, gazing down at the street as people scurried to the fruterías to buy the ingredients for lunch. I would stare over the red tile rooftops at the hilly countryside of southern Spain, dotted with olive trees and sparse clouds hanging lazily in the boundless sky.

It seems like ages ago, but at the same time it barely feels like time has passed. I guess that’s what the pandemic can do though.

Now I sit on this concrete balcony in Kansas City, gazing out at the grays and browns of a Missouri December, my hands numbing slightly from the chill in the air.

Photo by Darya Jumelya on Unsplash

There’s a unique nostalgia I feel for the life I trial ran in Spain. Lately I’ve longed for a feeling that I rarely experienced during the time I actually resided there. It harbored a unique simplicity. The land and the people walked with an interesting tranquility in their hearts that can only be found somewhere that sees near-perfect weather year round. A place where the heat of the summer can be escaped from within the cool, plastered walls and a glass of red wine. A place where even the coldest winters are easily withstood.

Nowhere was this tranquility more apparent than at the outset of this pandemic. When I still received my paycheck, even though I no longer had to go to work. When I passed my days reading Old Man and the Sea on the roof of my apartment building, passed my nights without a worry alongside my beautiful girlfriend, and could buy all my food and beer for next to nothing.

In Missouri the outside is rarely something to be appreciated. Between cold, snow, humidity, and thunderstorms, time is best spent inside with the windows closed tight. Rather than developing easy and tranquil hearts, we develop thick skin against the harsh, ever-changing climate. Rather than working to live humble lives, then taking to the bars that line every street with our friends, the damned protestant work ethic has us working for the honor of work itself.

Now, I sit on my concrete balcony and watch the empty streets and flashing streetlights, and I wish I knew what I had before I lost it.

But every now and then, a squirrel will leap onto a tree below me, just as the birds would flutter between the ornamental orange trees that lined the Spanish streets. Every now and then, a group of kids on skateboards will come scratching by, acting just like the groups of kids who played fútbol in the streets, marking the goalposts between the bar doors. Every now and then, the woman who lives across the street from me will come out to sit in her lawn chair smoke a cigarette, just like the woman with curly black hair would do leaning on her balcony opposite of me. Every now and then I look up at the sky, and it’s the same shade of deep blue that the sky used to be.

Every now and then I’m reminded that our lifestyle can be wholly dependent on place. But every now and then, I’m reminded of that strange saying, “you can take a man out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the man.”

We are not defined by where we live, and we are not defined by who we are now. We are defined by everywhere we’ve ever been; we are defined by everyone we’ve ever been, and I’m going to choose to be the happiest version of myself.

Though this Missouri climate may have given me thick skin, I will still foster a tranquility in my heart. Though the wind may blow against my face, forcing it into my chest for warmth, I will keep my eyes fixed on the boundless sky. Though people might not hang out on the café table lining the streets, I know a park nearby where I can sit at a picnic table with a travel mug full of coffee.

I choose the lifestyle I most enjoyed living, even when everyone around me looks at me like I’m crazy to sit in a park when its freezing outside. Or maybe they are looking at me like I’m crazy because I’m the only one with a smile on my face.

Now… if only I could still buy a can of beer for 25 cents.