Romanticising the train
Sitting in trains, truly makes me see how influenced I am by the world around me. Here I am sitting with a suitcase for my two day trip home from university, because I could not decide on what to wear. A backpack filled with my laptop "just in case I want to study" and a book called "Transformative Experience", so that I have something to read. I am going to be stuck traveling for 3.5 hours, so might as well make it worth my while.
The logic seems so flawless; Yes of course you should bring a book, and bringing your laptop to study makes perfect sense, yet my actual motivation for bringing them is not for their official purpose in my statement, my intention is tainted by the romanticisation I apply to my everyday life, the impression I want other people to have on me as I travel alongside them, and the expectations I hold of myself - the "improvements" I want to make to my life.
And perhaps it is a me thing, where I force myself to do those things because I would like to be the person on the train who unconsciously reads a book, or actually studies, yet it is just this fact, that I want to be it, that makes me realise I am not like that. A part of me would like to accept it, because there is nothing wrong with wanting to watch a Netflix show, there is nothing wrong with not enjoying the things I set out to do. Because why would I put up an act of myself if it goes against my desires? But is my desire not to "be" that type of person? Is this desire, to be "better" in my conception, strong enough to surpass the feeling of desire to just simply be content with who I am? And from this I question, should I feel content being who I am now, and is everything I am trying to do to "better" myself simply a feeble attempt at it, an act? Or is being content in this case a vice for growth?