Real Life

Like Scout Finch's obsession with the mysterious Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, I (and many other 20-somethings I know) have an almost obsessive curiosity about the "real world". It is a place that is defined only by its lack of definition.  I don't really know what this "real world" IS, but I certainly know what it ISN'T.

I can only conclude that college, for example, is not the real world. Living with your parents is not the real world. And more than anything, my incredibly ridiculous life in Germany, where I travel every weekend, can walk along the beach to Denmark after dinner, am only allowed to work 12 hours a week, and where my JOB is to experience as much as possible and simply soak it all up, is also absolutely NOT the real world. 

From what I have gathered in my almost 24 years of life in a not-real-world is that pretty much anything that is fun about being youthful and spontaneous is lost when you enter ever elusive world of realness.

So it makes perfect semantic sense that because I do not live in the "real world" I do not have a "real life". My life is, in essence, "Unreal".

The fact that I am, right now, sitting on my little sofa in my little apartment with my feet up on the 1984-Holiday-Inn-Carpet-Patterned ottoman listening to the rooster crowing and the wind blowing between the rhythmic ticking of my kitchen clock, watching my coffee cool and my newly painted toenails dry in the sun is UNREAL. Why is this unreal? Because it is perfect. Nothing could be better right now.

The fact that I am pondering whether I should go for a run on the beach, or heat up the delicious savory bread pudding with fresh tomatoes and pesto parmesan (which I got from Holland last weekend) that I made with my international dinner crew last night is UNREAL. Why? Because who has this much fun? And who has a a group of friends consisting of someone from Denmark, Norway and Germany and has a dinner club with them?

My life is Unreal. That is true, but this morning between paying bills, cleaning the kitchen, hanging my laundry, and making a shopping list for things I need to get before I head off to my italian/greek adventures, I realized that even though this life is UNREAL, this IS my real life.

Everyday is my REAL life. I am REALLY living it, and everything I've experienced--every beautiful mundane aspect of my life--is real. And it is wonderful.

Whether I enter the "real world" tomorrow, or whether I entered it when I was born, I hope that everyday is as beautiful as my unreal life.

I have a feeling it will be.