A Note From Xian

Re-posted from my old blog.

July 16, 2019

Travel is supposed to help you stop seeing the world in binary terms, but when I returned from China I couldn't have seen a starker contrast.

The carefree, free-wheeling journey I left behind was about to be ground into the dirt by the inevitable return to normalcy waiting for me right around the corner, or so I thought. And that terrified me. For a couple weeks, I avidly tried in vain to super-impose that adrenaline rush back into my brain like a spoiled little kid who just ran out of Halloween candy.

If that sounds like a good problem I should be so lucky to have, it's because it damn well is.

With some time, I realized that the post-travel blues are, for one, pretty normal, but more importantly, that to continue down the mental pathway I was on would be to throw away the one profound thing this trip taught me: how to enjoy the moment and be grateful for it.

When I first sat down on a park bench in Chengdu, what I experienced was exactly that. For the next two weeks, I had nowhere to be and I didn't answer to anyone but myself.

Wait. Seriously?

If I wanted to walk down that alleyway and look around, I could do that.

If I wanted to just continue to sit, I could do that, too. And I did. For quite awhile.

Watching people go by, mopeds steering in all directions, people drinking tea on the sidewalk...here I was simply taking in a few minutes of this new culture before worrying about that next sightseeing thing I'm supposed to do in this country I'll probably never return to. (Bourdain was absolutely right about this, by the way).

I did eventually check out that alleyway (and a dozen more), but promptly returned to a cafe because nothing felt more carefree than just sitting back and letting the culture shock sink in. It was addicting.