Wanting and Change
Blog Post Three 20/10/23
It’s 6:30 pm the sun has fully set, undeniable proof that the days are getting shorter and the gusts of winter wind echo the nearness of the end of the year. I am sitting at my desk with a cup of peppermint tea in front of me trying to understand, but at the same time not fixate on, the fact that I am quite literally stuck on an island. Due to gusts of wind reaching 45 mph, all ferries have been canceled for the entire day. If I think too much about it, I become worried, even though I had no intentions of leaving the island and I am expected to show up for work tomorrow. Knowing that I can’t leave, however, makes me feel like I need to find a way. It’s like when my sister would take a toy I didn’t care to play with but then when she’d have it, it would feel like it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted. Perhaps an internalised coding of never being able to be satisfied - we’re told to want it all, even if we don't use any of it. Something I’d like to grow out of, someday I aim to be satiable.
I think the biggest testament to my capacity to change is the fact I now eat and enjoy olives. This comes as a surprise after spending three years judging my roommate Jane, for eating them out of the jar. I owe her an apology, I now find them delicious and I wish I could walk out of my room, knock on her door, and offer to share a bowl. Growing up my parents would say, the only constant in life is change. A sentence that frustrated me because it felt like it was in place of an explanation as to why things were the way they were when perhaps little Tess didn’t want an explanation but more so someone to stand in the uncertainty of life with her.
One of the most freeing things I’ve ever read was how just because your past truth isn’t the same as today’s truth doesn’t make it a lie. The biggest blessing I could give myself is the reminder that two contradicting things can be true at the same time. I can love my parents but still feel hurt over childhood scars. I can miss home but still feel happy to be travelling and away from it. I can change my mind and still admit that my past reasons for that opinion hold validity. I can feel free and lost all at once. I can understand that change is constant but I can also have consistency in how I hold myself through those waves of change. A big dichotomy that presents itself while being abroad and travelling is knowing I’m a homebody but feeling as though I didn’t have a home. It’s made me have to reframe home from being something physical to something metaphysical like another person's presence, the sight of sunlight sparkling off the water's surface, the smell of crisp fall air, or the feeling of making someone laugh and hearing a similar sound of someone who you’ve loved before.
I had never considered myself a backpacker. I couldn’t have pictured myself as someone who you’d find barefoot, life in packs, maybe a bit dusty from their travel day, hunkering down in their hostel for the night. Yet there I was, in Belgium, alone (not barefoot), having just travelled from London via a train to Paris and then a bus to Bruges. I was a week into my backpacking adventure and I was already exhausted. Having little to no concept of how the European train system worked I set out, with blind ambition, to train around to various countries. Because I was travelling alone my mindset for the majority of the time was “It’s okay if things don’t work out the way I think they will, the only person I have to disappoint is myself and the only person I have to blame is also myself”. I was exhausted, sweaty, and hungry but filled with the feeling of accomplishment. There I was across the ocean from everything I knew but I was doing it. I was solo travelling and now that I was, what was next? I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
In a world of social media, influencers, and reality TV I think we have a tendency to do things without knowing why we might be doing said thing. Even outside this world of social media comparison, exceptions go beyond that and onto the crucial decisions put on young people right as they graduate high school. In many ways we’re told, quick! decide what you want to be now and devote all your energy and time to being that thing, even if you’re the youngest version of yourself you will be from here on out, commit to your decision because if you change - you fail. If you don’t succeed or if you don’t enjoy it - you fail. So choose wisely but also enjoy your youth but don’t - fail. My parents are not perfect people but one thing they did exceptionally well was open my mind up to the idea of failure being a facade and the grace of change and following one's heart.
This week's post is a bit all over the map. Last week I concentrated on why we leave and why we stay. I think some of those thoughts trickled into this week but perhaps in a different light; why did I go backpacking around Europe? Last week I came to the conclusion I left because I had a feeling that there was more. I went travelling to see more. And yes of course, I saw much more than the small city I grew up in or the larger city I studied in could offer me, but is the hunt for more an instinct from birth or is it a seed of capitalism, planted in you to never feel satisfied - to always feel like the next purchase will fix or fill you?
Last night I had a phone call with a friend from back home. After telling them the updates and sharing smaller mundane stories they said, “I’m proud of you for prioritising your happiness”. I felt satisfied. I felt full. But I was still left wondering if two opposing things can be true at the same time, is it possible to feel satisfied but also still in a state of wanting? Does wanting something inherently mean you are unhappy with what you have? Or is wanting somehow connected to change? Maybe acting as a counterpart to change, standing as the hope we hold out to the uncertainty of change. Maybe the end goal is to want many things but need nothing. Maybe the way to get over being stuck on island is to focus on what you have available rather than what you don’t. So tonight I will focus on my peppermint tea rather than my inability to sail to the mainland. I will remain stable in the present rather than carried away in my fear.