With a built-up confidence of a local and a hyped-up observance of a visitor, I walk and walk and walk seemingly headed somewhere definite and planned. I take streets that sound interesting and appear to be unique or slightly different from the ones I have been taking the past three hours or so. I make a right turn at a tiny cobbled street and I find myself again on Calle del Arenal. Ok, I walked here already a bit ago. This is probably the third time I walk this street, now in a different direction, but I really don’t mind because I notice something I didn’t the first two times, and this all is quite entertaining. In fact, I am purposefully avoiding the predictability and definiteness that Google Maps would provide in an instant. I am not seeking for either of these and I have no plan about getting anywhere in particular. Not this time. 

The gray sky, the overcast weather, the smell of trees with falling leaves remind me of the days when my favorite season was fall. Every pore of my body is enjoying the breeze and the drizzle. It’s starting to rain again. Perfect timing for cafecito, says the coffee lover in me. I decide to sit at the first coffee place I pass by on my way to nowhere in particular. I find a table perfectly covered from the rain at a not-so-busy restaurant and I order cafe con leche and torta de manzana. It’s my third day in Madrid.

On my visitor agenda today there is nothing else other than the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum of Art following my (now local) friend’s recommendation. No important sights, no must-experience restaurants, no popular picture-perfect streets. I only feel like random-roaming, people-watching, life-absorbing, here and now, on this continent that feels familiar and in this city that wants to remind me of all the pieces that have somehow not found their place within my new pace of life.

As I am sipping my cafe con leche, a woman selling bracelets approaches my table. On the table next to mine, the server lends a lighter to two elderly ladies. They joke around, light up their cigarettes, talk enthusiastically and laugh easily. Europeans, I think to myself. A family passes by the cafe and decides to sit and order a tortilla de patatas. A group of teenagers dressed up as your typical hip Europeans grabs my attention. They walk slowly as if not a single drop of rain is falling, laughing, teasing each other. I am very present. I feel like I am part of this world, organically, wholeheartedly, spontaneously.

I often wonder if and to what extent spontaneity is a luxury nowadays. If I wonder, it’s because I doubt it. And if I doubt it, it’s because in my present reality, I see myself and the people around me struggle to be spontaneous with fun and joy. I didn’t realize how much it bothered me until this trip. You don’t realize how much structure suffocates you until you at least get a temporary shift and allow yourself to break the bonds to the rigid pace of existence, even if that happens for just a week. I’ve been noticing the stark contrast between the almost predetermined order of the experiences most of us have back in America, and the experiences that arise from the looseness and chaos that shake up my routines and perceptions these days in Spain. 

And chaos one can find almost anywhere in Madrid. There’s chaos in the way you order a beer and a plate of sauteed champi at a historic bar on a Monday night. The way you eat or drink here is not linear, it’s not predictable, not timed. There’s no lingering pressure to leave the table when you are almost done with your food. No oddity in drinking in the park with your friends at 7, or 8, or 9 o’clock on a work day. No empty streets at 9 p.m; not much movement by 8 a.m. But there’s always people. There’s always flow. There’s gathering at any corner, at any time of the day. 

I miss gathering spontaneously. I miss sharing the dolcefarniente-ness with people that don’t live miles away from me. I miss being part of a community without turning its creation into yet another project on your never-ending list of to-do things and accomplishments. The fact that people here can roll out of bed, step outside of their apartment building, and walk a few meters to get to a coffee shop, interact with the barista, and chat with their friends and fellow residents makes me jealous. I look everywhere and see how interaction IS part of the structure in this city. The flow of humanity is on the streets, on the bus or the metro, in the rows of cafes and bars and restaurants, in the open public spaces, in the enormous neighborhood and central parks. This all feels familiar, homey, comfortable. It’s not seeing people and hopping in the car and always driving everywhere alone – a habit that I wish wasn’t so central to all of us living in the US – that still feels unnatural and foreign to me. 

In one of my previous posts I wrote about how sometimes within our modern modus vivendi, our happiness is often dependent on our stubbornness and persistence in defying a culture that perpetually keeps us too tired, too busy, too ambitious, too committed, too overwhelmed. I know for a fact that this is true for me and my lifestyle in America, but I don’t believe this is limited to America only. I have friends living in many countries on four different continents who share experiences that make me believe that the global poison of isolation is spreading everywhere. In our overly structured lives, there is less and less time to be and to connect with people. Our rigid schedules barely hold any slots for play and unstructured time.

As I write this, I also deeply feel how fortunate I am to have multiple insights into paces and structures of life. Growing up within a tight community in Macedonia, living in the US, traveling across North and South America and Europe – not a single aspect of these life experiences have been just a fun story to tell, a simple event or yet another memory, perhaps one day bound to be forgotten. My trip to Spain has been an awakening reminder that there is no story without people, that it is people that make any pace of life more enjoyable, and any life structure more secure and beautiful, always and everywhere.