Putting down roots

Almost 5 months ago, I left New York for Spain. I bought a one-way ticket at the beginning of the year with the intention that I would make a lifelong dream of living in Europe, of being European, a reality. My plan, if I could really call it that, was to rent apartment through Airbnb and move from country to country until I found the place where I wanted to put down roots. While I already knew I loved Spain—I took my first trip there exactly one year ago this month—I didn’t want to be too hasty about calling it home. I thought I’d stay a month or 2 in Spain, a month in Portugal, maybe a month in Croatia since they apparently have a good digital nomad visa.

But my goal has always been to put down roots: I need to live somewhere. As Seneca—everyone’s favorite Stoic philosopher—says, the urge to travel isn’t a novel experience and won’t help me “shake off the heaviness of [my] mind.” In one of his Moral Letters to Lucilius titled “On Travel as a Cure for Discontent,” he writes that no matter how many places you venture to in the world, you ultimately “need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.” I agree that one must settle somewhere in order to face the reality of self. But I also think a “change of climate” is needed to come to certain realizations that will lead to a “change of soul.” I just needed to decide which climate.

I’ve always felt that I have a European self (my truest self) buried within. It’s only been a question of how to surface this self, how to inhabit it fully. This was never going to happen in America. America feels separate from the rest of the world and, as a result, Americans are separate—separate in thought, feeling, lifestyle. I needed to go to Europe if I was to become European.

What does it mean to be European? I’m sure I romanticize this like I do everything else (a habit I’m trying to break). My romantic notion is that European is a state of mind, a mode of being. It’s hiking through the hills of Sitges, a city outside Barcelona, at the hottest time of day in search of a secluded beach that only those willing to hike to find can be rewarded with. It was on a hot Sunday afternoon when I was swimming on one of these beaches and watching other people make their way down the cliffside to do the same that I understood that this is what Europe is. This is what Europeans do, and I want to do it forever.

When I booked my one-way ticket to Spain, spending $700 to ensure I wouldn’t back out of this great quest for my European self, I didn’t know Spain would be the place. Well, I guess I did know, but I wasn’t certain. Instead of leaving Barcelona for Lisbon as I intended, I extended my 2 months in Spain to 3. I started taking Spanish classes and shaping what my daily life in the country could look like. But visas, especially tourist visas, don’t come with a set of roots—they uproot. I knew that after 90 days in Spain, or pretty much anywhere else in the European Union, I would have to leave for 90 days. Before Spain felt like home, this seemed exciting. Living out of a suitcase and bouncing around was what I wanted but only because I didn’t think I’d find the place I would want to put down roots so soon.

Spain suits me. It’s my spirit country. And the truth is that I’ve never wanted to be a nomad; I just wanted to find a place. My place. A place where I fit in. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt out of place, separate from the life I was leading and where I was leading it. Everything I’ve done has felt a little off because the place has always been off.

I came across the word monachopsis in John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and I’ve never connected with the definition of a word more: “the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach…unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.” It’s hard to put down roots when you feel perpetually out of place, when you’ve been running away from that feeling all your life. This journey hasn’t exactly been about finding the right physical place, though that is how it’s manifesting. It’s also not about finding happiness. I’ve given up on happiness. The thing about monachopsis is that it produces an ever-present sadness that I’ve had to learn to live with but not allow to swallow me entirely. In America, it was swallowing me.

Spain feels like my place because it’s where I feel most at home in myself. Now that I’m in England and Ireland for the next 90 days, I feel far away from this home feeling. I’m no longer on a journey to find a place to put down roots—I’m on a journey to get back to it. And, for me, that’s a much nicer journey to be on because I know what awaits me.