At the top of the Uffizi in Florence, after floating through the exhibits of Botticelli, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo, I made my way to the cafeteria. There was a bit of a short line to be seated outside, where one of my professors and a few of my classmates ate paninis and drank cappuccino freddos. As if I were preparing to enter a nightclub, I approached the tall host and began to recite a strange hybrid of Italian, Portuguese, and English that I had begun rehearsing when I got in line. He looked at me a bit puzzled and said in near crystal clear English, “Your family’s out there?”
“Yes,” I said hastily, eager to be finished with the interaction, “thank you.” I was a little flustered and red in the face. Why didn’t I just own up to the American tourist identity and abandon my spotty Italian? I’m sure a simple “I’m meeting someone” would’ve sufficed. This track of thinking is one I return to instinctively after an interaction like this. I’ll start kicking and muttering to myself, wondering why I’m like this, and then out of nowhere, I’ll start laughing aloud to myself. I probably look crazy, with my face as red as a brick wall and my laugh turning to a wheeze. I lean into it all the same.
I’ve grown obsessed with the “destruction” of my own ego. Or, to put it more mildly, self denial. I’ll skate my way through conversations, stuttering and tripping all over myself and ultimately putting my foot in my mouth. I sometimes embarrass my girlfriend if I talk to strangers when we’re out together. I’ll make an effort to break down the walls that people so often put it up around themselves and it’s always a 50/50 shot of how they will react. Sometimes they’ll laugh at me and she will shake her head, and other times I’ll have a conversation I never would’ve had. My instinct, of course, is to keep to myself, to sit in the corners of cafes and bars and watch others often loosened by the overindulgence of cocktails or maybe just a strong coffee, ramble on about something arguably too personal.
Resulting from a compounding of my own anxiety and reading works by James Baldwin and even Anthony Bourdain, I’ve warmed to the idea of embracing the absurd and uncomfortable, or as Baldwin puts it, “saying Yes to life.” I’ve been forcing myself to interact with others without any pretense as a sort of exposure therapy. This personal project of mine, that can sometimes verge on ascetic, has reached new heights during my time studying abroad in Italy. The language barrier adds another interesting dimension to my already somewhat clumsy social interactions.
I think all of this is not just beneficial, but necessary. To embarrass yourself always “kills your ego” a bit. Being unable to fully speak the language of the country you’re studying abroad in ensures a baseline obtuseness when talking to other people. Florence being a tourist-heavy spot, there are countless people making fools of themselves every day, multiple times a day. Discomfort, I think, is what traveling is about. You’re not only able to find the new limits of your “survival” skills, but you’re forced to rely on strangers, which we seldom want to do. Being abroad is equally as much about dependence as it is independence.
It’s necessary to play the part of the goofy tourist at least once in your life. It’s a tough transition but it’s one that is worthwhile. You will probably be laughed at and you will probably have many sets of eyes rolled at you. With each of these interactions, you get closer to creating another part of yourself.
I really appreciate how this essay moves from the concrete to the abstract–you handle both registers very well. Your intro frames the more reflective core of the essay (developed from your in-class writing–way to re-use that!) really well, but as you move from the concrete to the abstract, I feel like the essay just sort of dissipates. I think you need to consider a conclusion that brings us back to the world, perhaps breaking the opening anecdote into two pieces and saving one for the end, or ending on a different “concrete” moment that captures some of the textures and details of this experience. In other words, the intro and conclusion are where that sense of concrete place and character come in, and the middle section houses the “self,” and offers the grounding thematic for the essay. Brining back that sense of place and character and concrete, real-world interaction would help. You might also do that in the middle at times, relating a moment where you tactic carried out in front of your girlfriend worked, and one moment where it didn’t. Just those two shots of the concrete sort of stitch that more abstract / cerebral portion of the narrative back to the real world and give the reader a strong baseline in the sensory world.