Wander Diaries: The Illusion of Perfection
SWITZERLAND.
I've never been somewhere so pure.
Car tires are replaced by the sound of cow bells.
Goats and sheep graze the open hills.
Flower boxes sit outside every window.
Wood lodges dot the landscape faraway.
Crystalline streams plunge down the mountainside.
Red clover and thistle kiss the wildflower fields.
The tap water tastes like the snowflakes caught on your tongue as a kid.
My body aches and sings with every step up the steep slopes.
5 days here turn into 9.
It feels like a world between worlds,
A gap between time.
Where worries turn to dust.
I had found paradise-
and forgot that the grass is always greener.
I met a local and she shared the work and sweat behind every picture.
The effort that had appeared so effortless.
The work ethic, the pressure, the expectations that she felt her people held.
The illusion of perfection.
Living in a beautiful place does not mean that stress moves around you.
This world was just as human as my own..
Even if it was suspended in my idea of paradise.
Paradise is such a tricky concept- defined by perspective.
Something searched for so externally-
when it sits somewhere deeper within.
So we sat and learned about each others lives and countries.
We were the same at the core.
Two girls trying to make sense of life.
We told stories and smiled like sisters.
We ate fondue and drank schnapps and giggled like all our worries were gone.
Because in that moment- they were.
It was paradise.
A created heaven,
comprised of simple blissful moments of connection.
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”
