Discovering Myself while Discovering Chicago
Georgia Reese
The primary reason I took a walking class for my Discover Chicago curriculum is because I have always enjoyed walking. Whether I am walking by myself or with my family and friends, I think walking is an essential way to connect with yourself and the people in your life. Actually, during a walk is when I discovered that not everyone enjoys walking as much as I do. Back before I even got to Chicago, I was going on a walk with one of my friends and I was having a nice time enjoying nature and conversation. During the walk I slowly started to realize that she would rather sit on a bench and hang out, than walk and enjoy the nature of the trail.
During the many walks that I took, whether in solitude or with people, I found myself making discoveries about many things. Whether it was about my emotions, mentality, or physicality, walking is where I have made a lot of observations about myself over the past two months of being in Chicago. I have found that even though I have only been here for exactly two months and one day, I have become an entirely different person. Making this discovery involved having to make myself look at who I am now and who I used to be in a deeper and more introspective manner. Walking, in my opinion, is one of the key factors to being able to ground myself with my world and understand who I am and who I am becoming.
First of all, the emotional changes in myself that I have noticed have started to progress. I have always been a very dependent person, whether it is on my friends or my mom. I have always needed people to be with me constantly and to help me navigate my world, but now people are not always available to me. My mom, who I have always followed around like a lost puppy, is states away. At first, obviously, I was horrified. The second that my mom told me she was going to leave I begged her not to and almost started crying in the middle of a Walgreens. I was so scared of being myself in a new city, having no idea how to navigate without my mom driving me everywhere I needed to be.
My first day there I woke up having no clue what to do with myself. I knew I needed to go to Target, but I had no clue how to get there. So I opened Google maps and I walked to the nearest one. It was a very hard walk, I was honestly miserable just walking for maybe fifteen minutes, not to mention the walk back which involved very heavy Target bags. I decided to never go to Target again even if it meant never being able to buy groceries in my entire four years of college.
I mention this memory because, last week, I needed to go to Target and I just got up and went. The walk was fine and I took the bus back. One of my favorite things to do now is to put on my headphones and go walk by myself to wherever I need to be. Especially when I am feeling overwhelmed, being outside and having a goal and going towards that goal is very helpful to my mental and emotional state. This juxtaposition of feelings compared from me now to me just a couple of months ago is overwhelmingly different. I may not have even noticed the difference if I had not used my walks as a time to think about my growth as a person. How walking to the store went from a terrifying chore to a relaxing errand, in a pace that was almost unnoticeable until I really reflected on it.
Chicago has helped me learn more about myself emotionally, walking its streets and finding its destinations has been a therapeutic process for me since coming to this city. I have discovered that Chicago, despite its reputation of being dangerous, is actually a place that has helped me come out of my scared, shut away mindset. “The city is dangerous and cannot be trusted” (Rooney, 1). It is something that I heard spewed to me every single time I told someone I would be moving to Chicago. A part of me wants to shove it in their faces that I have been safe and that I have discovered Chicago in a way that they refuse to, but I have grown to understand that stereotypes are hard to leave a mindset when they are so firmly placed.
These stereotypes do not line up to what I have discovered about myself with the help of Chicago. I have found out things about myself that I never even could have imagined in southern Indiana. I am not the only one who has noticed this change in myself, my mom also has noticed.
When she came to parent weekend, she commented about my walking style many times. I am faster, more confident. Instead of her having to guide me, I am guiding her. This revelation was very eye opening to me. As someone who has relied on my mom for everything, being in this city where she relies on me to navigate and lead her, was one of those moments in life where I felt like my entire being had shifted. I was no longer a kid with her mom on a vacation in a cool city, I was an adult showing her mom around her own city. This revelation of adulthood all happened in Millennium Park while staring at Cloud Gate/The Bean, as I toured my mom to as much of downtown Chi as she could take.
According to publicartchicago.com, Cloud Gate is one of the biggest sculptures in the world. Jacob describes Cloud Gate as, “a way to the interior, to a deeper self, to a different point of view or a greater consciousness” (Jacob 177). The fact that I had a mind altering epiphany while staring into a sculpture that millions of people all across the world have seen and touched summarizes the feeling you get when you really walk to The Bean and look up at yourself among all of the other reflections.
Another aspect of my mental state that has changed because of Chicago is my bravery. The thought of walking by myself just a couple of months ago had never even crossed my mind, let alone taking a train or bus by myself. But being by myself is something that Chicago has taught me how to do correctly, or at least my version of correct. I have had to learn how to be a woman in the city. As Elkin states, “You’re not worried about the flâneuse walking alone in the city: she knows how to stand up for herself” (Elkin, 1). When I first decided to come to Chicago my mom bought me many things to keep me safe: a taser, pepper spray, a knife, and two alarms. I truly thought I would need all of those things every time I would leave my dorm, but as I explained to my mom when she visited for parent weekend, all I really need is an air of confidence and a really good resting bitch face (and maybe a knife for safe measure).
In this city of millions of people, I have learned that in order to really enjoy Chicago for all its worth, you cannot be constantly scared for your life. You need to be confident in yourself and where you are headed. Even on these discovery walks where I would have no real direction, as a woman or “flâneuse,” I would still need to appear to have one. Now that I know this, walking by myself is not as scary as it used to seem. Independence is exciting, rather than ominous. Living in Chicago, discovering Chicago, and discovering myself in Chicago have taught me how to come into myself not only as an adult, but as a person who lives in one of the biggest cities in the world.
Works Cited
Kathleen Rooney. “It Is Not Waste All This, Not Placed Here in Disgust, Street after Street.” Slag Glass City, 26 Feb. 2019, http://www.slagglasscity.org/essaymemoirlyric/walkers-in-the-city/waste-placed-disgust-street-street/.
Jyoti Srivastava. “The Cloud Gate/The Bean — By Anish Kapoor.” Public Art in Chicago, 8 Sept. 2007, http://www.publicartinchicago.com/li-sculp-bean-001b-4/.
Elkin, Lauren. “Radical Flâneuserie” The Paris Review, 31 Oct. 2016, www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/08/25/radical-flaneuserie.
Jacob, Mary Jane. Being With Cloud Gate. Jacob and Baas.
