Commitment: tale of a former nomad finding herself in a coffee cup.
We all have been there. Sometimes in our love life, sometimes in our working life. Is funny how we never think about it enough, but reality is that we apply the same pattern to any topic of our life and if is an undeniable truth that we are not our job or business, our job or business is the reflection of us, our values and our beliefs. Mostly about ourselves.
“You, my dear, have commitment issues.”
The first time I heard this sentence was a Saturday morning of quite long ago. I was wrapped in my pink kimono, having kopi and french toasts while looking at the ricefields in front of me with one of the few people in my life making my non-blood family. It was the beginning of the year and I was dealing with the infinite possibilities a Location Independent life was offering me. As long as I had someone to share my trip with, customers and projects ruling my compass or even some friends around creating a routine it was easy to know where to go next. But what when your six months visa, the one you took to have a quiet set up phase for a new project, expires and you don’t know where else to go?
I thought that was the problem, or maybe I was telling myself THAT was the problem because it was easy to drop responsibility on geography than on myself. But the truth was different.
Say your name, demon, say your name!
YOU, MY DEAR,HAD COMMITMENT ISSUES.
As I look back to the last 12 months all I can do is smile: Life is what is happening while I’m planning something else. But for the first time in a long time I decided to take a break. As said before we apply the same pattern to everything we do so if I wanted to get different results I would need to make different choices. The first hard and radical choice I did back then was to step out of the bubble and coming back to the first world.
My life in Asia was pretty easy and slowly converting me in pure laziness. If Asia was the kick I needed to become the person (and the professional) I am today, after the learning phase I needed to go out there and test my new skills. So I decided to start walking back to everything I spent the last decade running away from: the place I was raised up. For the first time in long long time I booked a one way ticket back there. I spent my time with my family. I slept in the room I was used to be tucked in from my auntie when I was a kid for weeks. I had Mom’s pancakes for breakfast, beers with my oldest friends, the ones who met the little revolutionary protesting in cold northern Italy’s morning against the system and who carried me home drunk on old cars. I spent time alone. Watching pictures and album, reading old notes, trying to find Charlie behind words. I discovered that there was nothing scary, at the end and my monsters were not living in a house, they were travelling with me all around the world. I was simply ignoring them and I could decide to ignore or face them wherever I was. Geography was just an option, it has always been, it will always be. I could be happy or miserable, satisfied or frustrated, successful or a complete disaster wherever I was.
I took another trip back to the other place I was used to call home. The only one I tried to setup a family and a stable life in. The only one so far I was feeling sort of committed to. Spent time with my family there, being spoiled and cuddled from the people who knew all my geological eras. Being disappointed and learnt to accept people and situations for what they are. Deciding what to allow in, what to let go, what can be part of my life, what not.
The day I left for my latest destination I jumped on a plane with 12 kgs backpack, a bracelet gifted by a buddhist monk in Kuala Lumpur almost a year before in one of my darkest days tied to my backpack since that day and no idea of where I was going and why. I just knew that I was done with my past and it was time to find a place I would feel fitting me enough to set a basecamp. To convert from nomad to traveller, to root in, to pursuit deep connections and build consistent relationships. I was sure the day I would find a place with all the requirements I would have stopped and start building.
Barcelona ticked all the boxes.
The weather, the sea, the people, an international airport just 20 mins ride from home, the food, the jazz clubs… There are one million reasons why I can define this place my perfect basecamp but none of them in particular. In this last six months I took all the lessons collected in the previous years and started applying them to a new lifestyle, made of small stable steps. I decided that if I should work out my commitment issues, I would have start from the biggest lie I kept saying to myself in the last years: Freedom is hopping around the world and changing again and again and again, as much as I want, as long as I want. The lesson I took the last six months was that Freedom was something more important and deep than a location. Freedom has nothing to do with where we are neither with what we are doing. Freedom has nothing to do with our bank account or what we can or can’t afford. Freedom is being 100% our natural self and being respected, accepted and in some cases even loved for the divine mess we are. Once I discovered that, there was no further reason to keep on running away, swallow words, being afraid of speaking my mind and feelings about places, situations or people. I am free to be myself and I will get the life I think I deserve, here, there or elsewhere. So time had come to unpack and start rooting, after a very long while, in a city where I was another stranger in a bunch of strangers.
In the last months I have been hanging out with lots of people, some of them since over half a year. Collecting pictures in the same bunch of people with different haircuts, tan or clothes. Knowing which number to call if you feel the need to have a coffee with a friendly face. The taste of your favorite croissant in the morning, from the bakery around the corner, with the lady who keeps (SINCE 6 MONTHS!) talking to you in Catalan even if you are answering in Castellano every other day.
In the last six months I spent plenty of time hanging out with myself. If loneliness is a curse, solitude is a blessing. I walked tens kms per day with music in my ears letting thoughts come and go. I wrote diaries and notes in front of a coffee cup watching the sunset on the beach or in my favorite barrios in town. Took pictures of anything amazing me on my way. I had Kilkenny cream in the Irish Pub two blocks from home listening to live music. I ate whenever I felt hungry, nap every time I felt the need to, took time off when the bucket needed to get empty. I stop acting like the person I wanted to be and start living and being like the person I am and what I discovered in this revolutionary simple life strategy was that at the end of the day nothing comes easier than being exactly what we are. I resigned to the idea that people should like me or love me. I’m not a strawberry donut shining into a fancy bakery, I am a common human being. Some people will like me, others will not. Someone will try to make space into my life others will just walk over. As someone told me this morning: every person is coming into our life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Accepting this simplified everything. Why are we still judging the value of a thing or a person based on time? Why don’t we just take whatever something or someone has to take into our life, thank and let life unfold?
Last Monday and I was at the airport again on my way back home drinking a huge latte and having a cinnamon roll while noting thoughts on my notebook. This year has been everything but easy, lots of things are still to fix up and require work and time. But as I was seeing my self reflected in a glass window, I was thinking: I really like the Charlie I am today. I finally started applying all the lessons taken to daily life, to my business life and even to human relationships. I throw away a huge bunch of stereotypes which were ruining everything good I was attempting to build. I learnt to accept the fact I am human and I have the divine right to be scared, vulnerable, fragile and when it happens I let it out without hiding it behind a huge blanket of sarcasm is perfectly fine. I am learning to receive without feeling guilty or in debt. And for the first time ever I allowed to a perfect stranger to meet my unrated version deconstructing the Chinese wall of defences I built towards these years, without any test or expectation, not trying to be perfect or strong or brave, just being perfectly myself and I discovered that it was really cool.
So, what about your commitment issues, Charlie?
Well,I think I am on my way. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it will still take time. Sometimes I feel like someone coming out from a long flu, when is feeling way better but are still walking out of the house just few hours per day and properly cover to avoid to get sick again. I realised I don’t feel the need to have a compass, anymore. Home is going to be wherever I am and I choose to be happy wherever I am. Having coffee in bed before starting a working day while reading the news with my 8 pillows all bought and chosen by me and the playlist on Spotify on, waking up with Mom preparing me my favorite Almond milk cappuccino sinking her homemade cookies in it while cuddling obese lazy cats, a huge latte in my best friend’s coffee house in the center of one of my favorite cities in the world sugared with the stories we will never get tired to tell, falling asleep with the amazing concert of frogs and bugs of the ricefields or watching the magic of the northern sun rising up and setting down behind a church sitting on a window with a white and orange mug.
One day at a time.
