One of the places I went this summer was the beautiful, almost judgment-free, Key West. It's the place where museums are surprisingly popular, and there are more parrots on Duval Street than children.
I am what you would call a "cold blooded" person. Not because of a vicious demeanor, but because I would much rather go to Antarctica than any blistering beach directly under the sun.
Knowing this detail about me, you can imagine my thoughts when I was told instead of going to the gorgeous, mildly cool Europe, we were going to the southernmost point of the United States.
Going to Key West originally felt like a chore after coming back from Canyon Ranch, a place where all you needed was leggings and tank tops. Key West required legitimate clothes, which forced me to spend too much money at Old Navy.
The trip also didn't have a great start. Apparently, when traveling to Key West, you can only check one bag of luggage. You wouldn't think this would be a problem because we were only going for a week, but someone in my family "needed" two suitcases. This forced us to cram everything from the extra suitcase into our suitcases which made it a memorable trip from the start.
The travel experience overall was filled with memorable moments, but what really matters is what happened when we touched the ground.
The airport in Key West is maybe 1/1,000 of the size of the Atlanta airport, so it's hard not to bump into people while waiting for your luggage. There was a kid's travel baseball team on the plane with their parents, and they were beyond excited to be there. One of the boys passed me as he walked onto the plane and yelled, "Yes!" because he was that excited. Needless to say, their positive energy made waiting for the bags in the un-air-conditioned airport positive and entertaining.
Really, that is what Key West is like: no air-conditioning, positive, and entertaining. At least the airport gave us reasonable expectations for the trip.
The first thing I noticed about Key West is that everyone sweats; and I mean everyone: locals, tourists, small, big, humans, animals–everyone is hot. Even though everyone in Key West is sweating constantly, everyone seems like they're having a good time.
As someone who was self-conscious about being hot all the time, I was grateful that everyone seemed content with their own sweat and the sweat of their neighbors. No one stared at people who were sweating, no one made comments about it, and even in close proximity when watching street performers, no one seemed to acknowledge the smell of sweat in the air. Nobody cared. What a wonderful place to be.
This was a judgement-free place. Well, so we thought.
One day, towards the end of our trip, we walked into a jewelry store. After all of us had a piece of jewelry in mind, one of the workers casually asked, "Hey, do any of y'all want a beer or something to drink?" and one person in our party said in an over exaggerated country accent, "Y'all got any fireball?"
The employee's eyes widened in excitement, and they came out of the back with a large bottle of fireball. Before we knew it, we were taking shots in a jewelry store. When I think about it now, it really isn't that unusual for a store in Key West, but in the moment, it was incredibly unique. I won't say how many shots were taken, but I will say I experienced my first moment of judgment after the first one.
Another family had come into the store, and the employee asked if they wanted to join in the fun. The father looked at us, looked at the fireball and shot solo cups (they exist), back at the employee and said, "Yeah, no thanks." Ouch. The first time we had been judged in Key West. It hurt a little, but the sting of judgement was quickly washed away when the man's wife yelled, "Of course we'll do shots!"
Once again, Key West became a judgement-free zone in my mind. I think that Key West truly does have less judgmental people than anywhere else in the world (that I've been to, at least), but I also think our mindset plays a huge part into determining how "judgement filled" a specific location is.
We know there is judgement everywhere. There is always going to be that person people-watching in Disney, trolling on your twitter, and even taking screen shots of your snapchats to save for a later date.
The important thing is our mindsets. If our mindset is knowing there will be judgement, but doing whatever we want anyway, the world seems a little more like Key West (minus the scary aquarium touch pools).
