The Art of Staying
Something as simple as being around has so much power.
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Home is like a canvas. The longer you stay in one place, the more detailed the painting. The colors take a shape and the strokes tell a story. When I was younger, all I wanted to do was leave home — wherever home became — swap one canvas out for another and collect as many experiences as I could. Novelty was the equivalent of growth. My plan was to live in as many cities as I could: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipai, Kigali, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Melbourne… I thought my life was something I had to chase before I got too old. That youth was meant to be spent. That by staying in one place, not in motion, not in flux, I was allowing the doors of the world to close on me, one after the other.
The more I traveled, though, I realized that a life spent between places, what many call nomadic, closes one of the most important doors we have. Walking through airports and apartments and clubs and grocery stores, I got tired. Spending life outside, as one does when they travel, and as one does when they make their life revolve around travel, searching for a sense of community and a feeling that they’ve seen enough to make the unfamiliar familiar, means that you have no down time. I got tired of not being able to spend an entire week doing nothing at home, writing or reading or watching television, because there was always something to see. I got tired of turning down invitations to birthday parties and random dinners because I was gone, or would be gone. I got tired of saying goodbye. I got tired of wondering what life would be like if I stayed here, or there, or there. Tired of seeking adventure at the expense of a home.
Nowadays, I am more interested in the art of staying, in the kind of novelty that surfaces with being off the go. By being available in one place, things reveal themselves, big and small, relationships and hobbies and communities, invitations to go for lunch on a random day or watch a movie after work. Conversations with friends that rely on the presence of each other.
Something as simple as being around has so much power. It opens the doors of our lives, and all the little things that take place in them, to the people around us. And that is what makes life special.
After almost three years of living in Mexico City, it feels like home. It feels like home in a way that I’ve never felt before. I feel rooted in a slower process of living. Knowing that my life is here, however long “here” means, gives me the freedom to live it. And the desire to run towards something else no longer tugs at my heart.
Maybe this sense of belonging has less to do with Mexico City and more to do with the fact that most of us get better at living as we grow up. All I know is that, sitting with my friends for hours over coffee and an assortment of half-eaten pastries, I would rather be here than anywhere else. And maybe, as we grow older, we learn to live that statement wherever we are. The most important slice of life is here, around us, at any given point in time.
I feel lucky to have found a city to call home, a community to yearn to return to whenever I am called away, and a partner to share it with. That is probably why I did not enjoy traveling this past month, hopping around Europe, doing what normally brought me joy. I thought that I had grown out of solo-traveling, out of moving between hotel rooms and countries and languages. That at a certain point, you get tired of seeing new places.
But I think this has less to do with growing out of one thing than it does growing into another: The joy of being in one place, of seeing all its corners and quirks, finding the people who make you want to grow and mold stories from time spent together. For now, all I’d really like to do is stay home.
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With love,
Your favorite capybara ~ AKA Travis Zane
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