I had planned to first wait for the greetings of our Asian explorers, but since they have assimilated to the local culture so well they are busy (or, are stuck with Chinese censorship like Weeber. Can you feel the… irony? :D) I decided it’s time for GreenBitch to show up.
So, I’m the anti-itinerant of us, the one who truly was left behind. In fact, most of my friends have fled from Finland by now, to study abroad or just to chase the sun with a backpack on. When I explain the situation to some people, they always ask me “so why did you stay?” It seems like staying at home, not adventuring the world, has become a statement too.
So, Why did I stay indeed?
Hmm.
*Thinking*
Well
looking out of the window doesn’t help much…
Why did I?
I didn’t
feel ready to leave. I had just settled down in my new home in Tampere when
everybody started applying for foreign universities. The idea of changing place
and people around me felt too distant, too soon. Before studying international
relations I was traveling around from place to place, from continent to
continent, feeling greedy to see and experience as much as possible, and it was
awesome!
I wanted to feel home again. I missed my
Shire. And that was Finland, with all its trees, sauna, lakes, fresh air,
grumpy and shy people, my own weird language, and of course family and friends
too. And, at times, life has treated me well up here. I try to appreciate the
little things that make life beautiful. As one of my friends once said, you can
travel to the end of the world but you can never escape from yourself. You have
to learn to feel comfortable in your skin, walking in your shoes, wherever you
are.
Okay, after
all this beautiful blah blah philosophy I have to admit that sometimes I really
miss traveling! I can’t help getting jealous to my traveling friends, throwing
longing glances to the World’s map on my wall, or feeling guilty about neglecting
my backpack under the dust in the corner of my room. And when I’m copying the
words of my professor to my notebook “Learning diary deadline: no avant-garde,
no creativity, dull and formal = good”, the little traveller inside me screams:
“Let’s go to India!!!”
On the
other hand, I think I should feel a little embarrassed about having
existential anxiety that most of the people can’t afford. As a member of the
privileged Western fat-ass generation, I can circle around the questions like ‘to
see or not to see the world’, because I have so many choices what to do with my
life. My passport works as a VIP ticket to anywhere. And what I do with this
lucky position? Whine and make an issue out of it!
A little
more whining now when I got the taste of it: I often miss my friends abroad,
Finns and non-Finns. My dear posse of itinerants! Where’s Sportesse when I have
to make foam out of eggs and sugar by hand? Where is TeroGilbert to make
parties more eventful by spiking the punch with her deadly 80% vodka from the
east, and where’s.. how the hell I’m supposed to write his name anyhoo the guy
from Lapland getting intoxicated and funny by it? Where’s Lassemon when there’s
something politically incorrect to be said? Where’s Weeber taking us to some
hipster activities?
It’s not
all about complaining. In the middle of the yearning, petty existential crisis
and “something bad happened”-phone calls, I’m happy to have a lovely someone bringing
me Ben&Jerry’s from the darkness and coldness, reminding me that ice-cream
still tastes delicious and all in all,
life is
good.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti