It’s pretty obvious that everything in our lives has meaning. The necklace we’re attached to, lucky socks that always seem to ‘win the football games’, and just anything that makes you remember a specific time/person in your life. As I’ve grown older I’ve started to add another ‘attachment’ to my life- places. I love the idea of being in love with locations, smells, and sights. Our lives are movies playing right in front of our movie screen eyes, we just have to stop for a second and enjoy. It sounds weird but let me explain.
Locations:
Somewhere deep inside everyone there’s a sense of wanderlust. The longing to find a new culture or see something awe inspiring just thrives inside our souls. However, you don’t’ have to travel far to fall in love with a location. You can fall in love right at home. Picture this: you’re a regular at a local bakery because you can’t get enough of their pastries or coffee- whatever it might be it calls you back every time. You meet someone special or you want to take your loved ones there and you ask yourself why? Well, it’s because it has a special place in your heart. Locations are everything. The place you fell in love, the place you fell out of love, the place where you found out you got the internship- they’re actual moments in time. Instead of putting these memories in your pocket like the objects we keep, you can visit the place and replay the memory each time. It does not even have to be anywhere you go, it can be your home, it can be anything. It’s important.
Smells:
You ever walk into a place and all of the sudden smell something so familiar and then you feel a huge wave of nostalgia? That’s what falling in love with places and smells have to offer. You smell something so similar to the food your mom used to make and it reminds you of home. Or that specific smell I can’t quite explain when walking down Main Street of Disney World and Frontier Land. It’s easy to fall in love with smells because they’re almost like lingering memories.
Sights:
Landmarks are fantastic, the Eiffel Tower, The Grand Canyon, etc. But…when I mean sights I’m not talking about those icons. I’m talking about dim lighting in a nice restaurant and the way it shapes someone’s face and makes them so beautiful. Or when it rains and the streets seem so empty, it’s those moments and those sights you have to just take in and love. Sometimes taking a photo of a sight is just not enough, you have to actually see to fall in love and have a moment of happiness within yourself.
It’s something you just have to feel. I can only hope that everyone I meet has fallen in love with a place for it’s beauty and for the memories and warm feeling it has brought them.
Images: Cover Image taken by author