As you are reading this, I am halfway across the world, floating happily on a boat venturing through northern France. Hopefully, I have a warmed croissant in my hand, am sipping a cappuccino and am staring blankly out upon the Seine River, on to the French countryside, and trying to figure out how to do my life back home in Dubuque from this locale. If they can produce live hologram concerts featuring the late Roy Orbison, surely technology is getting close to creating lifelike minions of ourselves to do our bidding, while our real-life selves get to kick back and relax, with a change of scenery.
It seems anytime I take myself overseas — to Europe in particular — I am making mental notes on how I can take more of the continent’s way of life back home with me. Maybe its my familial European roots, the rich history or the breathtaking views that look like a collection of images from postcards at every turn. But there is something about this part of the world that goes straight to my heart, creating a kind of warmth and comfort I have yet to find replicated by anything else.
Much of it, I believe, has to do with the European pace. Europeans work to live, creating the necessary space for life’s pleasures and connectedness. In the west, much of the time, we live to work.
We often experience a heavy guilt for taking time out for ourselves — or take time, but then fall behind and are right back at square one in acceleration to make up for “lost time.” We often measure .
