The population of my hometown is 18,000 people. I can get into Manhattan in less than fifteen minutes on a good day, to the beach in an hour, and to the country's best restaurants on a quarter tank of gas. I know most of the people driving on the opposite side of the road and my name is called at least three times when I walk my dog around the block. Most of you are probably nodding your head in agreement since you know this feeling, but what I will say next may not strike the same chord; I never feel stuck. I never have that thought of "I have got to get out of here...I hate this place." I never knew why up until I started writing this article.
My parents made sure I was never in the same place for too long. We have gone on extravagant trips to Paris, Rome, Barcelona, and seen the sights that everyone should undoubtedly see before they die. This is something that I am always grateful for, but some of my favorite days have been spent not too far from home, for not a lot of money. My mom and dad have always stressed that culture is everywhere that you want it to be. It can be in graffiti covered street corners, cheap, local pizza restaurants, and small antique shops. The important thing is to leave the places and things that you are used to, if only for a day, and swap it out with new destinations, new faces, new food, and new sights to see.
For as long as I could remember, I was put in the backseats of cars each weekend and taken an hour or two away to a new location. No, this isn't the start of a horror film. This is the way that I have seen the world and lived a hundred lives before even turning twenty. I have found a woman's picture and mysterious phone number in an an eerie antique shop in Tarrytown, New York. I have brushed shoulders with mystical women clad in purple in New Hope, Pennsylvania's crystal shops. I have walked on the same grounds as Jimi Hendrix in Woodstock, hoping to magically wake up the next morning with fingers that can strum a thousand notes a minute. I have lived all of these lives from taking a simple drive in backseat of my parent's car for nothing more than one trip to the gas station and a coffee for the road.
Culture can be found anywhere if you look hard enough for it and expand your definition of it. Culture can be found in the tree outside of your house and in the food your best friend's mom cooks each time you come over. It's hidden in dirty corners, on roads not too far from home, and in faces you see for the first time, if only for a passing moment. It is in your grandmother's eyes when she tells you about the first time she fell in love and in the untold stories of the people you think you know like the back of your hand.
Just because you may know the names of the streets and the people in line for breakfast each Sunday morning, that does not mean that there is simply nothing to be discovered, no culture behind these people and places and things. Someone is coming to your hometown for the first time, and like I have done a thousand times over, will see everything it has to offer with fresh eyes and an open heart. It is important to leave to understand this, to come home and rest your head in your own bed knowing that you have lived a hundred lives, but the one you come back to may surprise you someday.
