Short Musing ft. Good Will Hunting and Madrid
When I think about walking through disorienting cobblestone side-streets on my recent weekend trip to Madrid, as you do, I can’t help but think of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. Williams’ character is talking to a gorgeous young Damon (Will), who thinks he knows everything and has life figured out. He says, “I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.” Basically, Will knows about all these places, he’s studied them, he’s read about love, about loss, but he hasn’t actually experienced anything yet. “...you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable.”
As much as virtual reality and social media try to get us there, you can’t just read about something and know what it’s actually like until you’re there experiencing it for yourself; the smells, the sounds, the atmosphere. It’s so easy with social media to see different cities and countries from around the world, or see the images and narratives people post online - and assume you know all there is to know about them. We make up narratives about people we don’t even know, based on things we’ve read. We form biases and opinions on places we’ve never been because we “just heard it was that way” from a friend, the news, a magazine article.
And when you already go into a situation thinking you have everything figured out, that you know everything about someone’s story; you’ll never be able to get an authentic experience. I thought I knew what it was going to be like to move to a different country and work here for a couple of months, I’d had friends who had done similar things and I’d read a lot about it in anticipation of the move. Ha. I was, obviously, wrong.
Robin Williams finishes with, “I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in.” For people and places, you can know what they are from information, but it’s the authentic, in-person connections that will show you the authentic side.
It’s extremely humbling to go somewhere and realize how little you actually know, be it about a place or person. It was a quick weekend trip but it reminded me why I love travelling so much, it shows that other ways there are to experience life other than the “routine” you’ve constructed as normal in your day to day life.