How Literary Travel Transforms the Way You See Yourself

Many great books start with the changing of a city. With the packing up of an old life and settling into somewhere new. A different skyline, a different job, a different identity, cities change who we are and how we see ourselves.

What does your city say about you? How does the architecture reflect upon you? Or, more interestingly, will this city change you? Perhaps it has already.

What Your City Says About You

There are many famous essays written about the types of people who inhabit certain cities. The Parisians do everything with style, the folks from Cambridge seek to be the most intelligent, and the New Yorkers the most honest and innovative. But it delves deeper than this. You don’t necessarily need to move somewhere to meet a new version of yourself, even setting foot in a new city can alight something within you. 

The Living Pulse of a City

Cities, and almost all current human settlements, are ever-changing. They expand, shrink, and transform constantly; they are almost living beings themselves. Cities have their own identities, made up of a myriad, a kaleidoscope of things: architecture, landscapes, museums, histories, landmarks, weather, the list is infinite and perhaps also changes depending on who you ask.

Sometimes, even before we visit a place, we travel there through books. Literary travel lets us wander cities in our imagination—walking the streets of Paris with Hemingway, getting lost in Tokyo with Murakami, or hearing the echoes of Athens through Homer.

There is a reason people tend to go on and on about certain vacations or study-abroad experiences. How that trip your mother took when she was in her mid-twenties impacted the way she saw the world, and the way she viewed herself. How one trip or one city can impact our worldview so fundamentally. 

When a City Feels Like Home

There are certain cities we will step into and immediately feel at home, as if there is a part of our identity that always yearned to be there. There are cultures where people are warmer, more extroverted, and talkative. This may either scare or delight you. Often, people feel as if they were always meant to live in a city like this, and by some twist of fate, they had been born on faraway soil.

Or, you travel to a city and in front of you appears an apparition of who you could be, the version of yourself you had always wanted to become. Like Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, falling in love with the luxurious lifestyle of Dickie Greenleaf, who spent his days in small Italian towns, listening to jazz and learning the language. 

The Mirror Effect: What Distance Reveals

Of course, we will not always feel so drawn to the cities we visit or the cities we move to, but we will always discover something about ourselves. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, they say. This can also be true about cities. It is very natural and human to find the faults in our current lives, at our jobs, and in the towns or cities where we live.

A moment away can bring about a spell of unexpected homesickness, and we start to appreciate aspects of our own cities that we had scorned or overlooked. A creative and curious mind seeks contrast; it seeks novelty, so that it can develop a better outlook upon the world. 

The Courage to Step Beyond Routine

Routine can be the enemy of courage. It brings us too much safety. Breaking routine, allowing ourselves to experience a city different than our own, forces the routine to change. Going to a new country may mean speaking a new language, exploring routes you are not familiar with, and having to rely on the advice of strangers. Helen Keller once said, ‘Life is a daring adventure or nothing’, which rings true, but perhaps makes one believe that such adventures should always be grand and terrifying.

You do not have to move to a new city or change your life entirely to break routine and live fully and bravely. Stepping out of our comfort zone by travelling to a new city is also an act of courage. Writer Mary Anne Radmacher echoes this when she says, ‘Courage does not always roar, sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.’ 

Cities as Characters in Our Lives

There are reasons cities are personified; they are not merely backgrounds of our lives but characters themselves. They can reflect where you are and act as a prophecy that suggests where you are going.  So, ask yourself, what does your city say about you? Is it the town you were born in, or perhaps a town you’re living in for university? Or for work? For love? Do you enjoy the way it reflects upon you? Or, better yet, ask yourself, what would you like your city to say about you?

And if you ever find yourself between cities, let literature be your map. Through stories, you can travel endlessly, discovering places, and perhaps parts of yourself, you have yet to meet.