Back to the daily, the routine. Back to the studio apartment, the commute to and from work.

After returning home a few weeks ago, I immediately unboxed my books, journals, and favorite magazines. I didn’t bring my most prized journal with me this summer because of lack of space in my pack, and when I took it out from the darkness, I flipped through it along with journals of years past, tossed it aside, and forgot about it.

This morning, I decided to bring it with me to my daily coffeeshop working session, and opened it to the most recent page, reading the usually cheesy quote at the top:

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. – Lao Tzu

It sinks in: every time I come back from a trip abroad, it takes weeks, if not months, to settle into my idea of what it takes to get on the path in pursuit of my goals: A marathon, recital, book, Fulbright proposal, new job, relationship. When I’m on the road, though, these things evaporate, and I can focus fully on finding what I really want outside of the confines of my normal, day-to-day routine.

I challenge you, Lao Tzu:

A good life has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

Less goals, more purpose. Less arriving, more enjoying.

“It’s just the way things are,” she said.

America. Land of the free, but also land of the tasteless peaches and the realities of the costs of being a human.

Sitting anxiously in the clinic room, waiting for the MD to knock. She enters, doesn’t make eye contact, introduces herself and sits down at the computer. I’m immediately turned off by her coldness, her lack of care in communication. Oh, boy.

After the official business she asks me what my summer has entailed and I explain to her briefly the contents of my summer travels and research. Her intrigue heightens and we begin a lighthearted conversation about food, community and life here in Evanston. She then reveals to me that I need to see an outpatient surgeon to discuss a minor operation. My heart drops, my palms become sweaty, my heart rate increases, and my mind buzzes as I realize this means possibly $1000 of out-of-pocket costs. I think, “welcome home to America”.

I ask her what my options are, what the details of my “good coverage” with university insurance entails. I can tell she is proud and passionate about the University coverage, and she delights in taking a solid 15 minutes to explain to me the breakdown of how things get billed, sent to insurance, and what is left to bleed from my pocketbook. She can tell I am unenthused about the prospects, and she responds with the all-too-familiar “it’s just the way things are”.

The conversation shifts to quality of care and moves into a more abstract version of the same topic; opportunity and access. We discuss the United States healthcare system and Northwestern University tuition and how these relate to the “quality” or “opportunity”. She argues cutting-edge technologies are worth expensive premiums, potentially pushing people into paying as much as $1000 dollars a month to even have access to coverage with a deductible. In Canada, she says, people might have to wait months before an operation…

She goes onto compare my education at Northwestern in a similar way; the $54,120 in tuition buys not only a beautiful looking campus, but access to opportunities to expand potential through research grants, quality resources for Fulbright applicants, summer resources and other “cutting-edge” opportunities.

I sit there and absorb her words, her perspective. I’ve never had the opportunity to live the realities of healthcare elsewhere, higher education elsewhere, but I’ve talked to enough people abroad to understand that they laugh at our system, hurt for the people who are stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills and/or student debt.

My emotion; conflict.

I leave the doctors office, ride my bike to Jewel-Osco, and buy some peaches and cottage cheese. Peaches; 4$. Cottage cheese; $2.50. I pedal my way home, ride the elevator up, enter my apartment, crack open the cottage cheese, cut the peach and take a bite.

Flavorless.

In that bite of peach, my world solidifies. I am transcended by memory back to the 60 cent peaches of Spain, plump and fresh… the 70 cent peaches of Italy, sun-stroked and  juicy, rich. Tastes of the earth, tastes of life. The flesh of the peach is there, but the life in the peach is nonexistent.

I need to make my home in this place again.. I will find my flavorful, fresh peach. I will make use of the opportunity, access. After I pay the medical bills, that is.

Outpatient care wait list: three weeks.

Flavorless Peaches.

East London is my temporary home, but I foresee a budding long-term relationship with it.

I had a conversation last night with a friend I met while in the Swiss alps regarding free will, determinism, and solo travel as we grabbed pints at a place in East London and joined a crowd of ultra-hipster residents on some colorful, claustrophobic benches.

I’ve been taking long-term solo trips since the day I turned 18 and took off with a one-way ticket to Seattle. America, Canada, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, Mexico, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines…. I’ve learned that these places are simply empty landscapes. What makes a place, a trip, or a meal special is the company. Every place I’ve traveled has left a string of shared experience and each person I’ve met has left an imprint; I synthesize what relevant thing was learned and return “home” bringing with me a new way of living and seeing the world.

This is what differentiates the traveler and the tourist. Travelling is a way. The word itself implies a deeper way of moving, of absorbing. Travel allows for the world to push and pull you at its will; a tourist will plan, a traveler will allow. The beauty of this lies in what is allowed and the resulting lessons learned. Cultural osmosis at its peak happens through conversation, usually over shared food or drink. When I travel, I seek out these occasions everywhere I go.

The past few weeks in London has fed my entrepreneurial fire. As I sit in coffee shops and bars sipping endless espressos, pints, and gin & tonics next to people a decade older and further into the research and development of their lives, the clarity and immensely terrifying reality of the next decade of my life becomes more and more real.

I want to take my accumulated 9 months of solo backpacking around the world and inform new entrepreneurial motivations.

The push and pull, the planing and the allowing, the free will and determinism.

Keep allowing.

fish&chip.