We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto
Most of the time, I feel like I have some sort of grasp on the fact that I will never fully understand anyone, knowing that the way that I rationalize a given situation is not always going to be the same way that someone else rationalizes the same situation. Usually, I am so at terms with this knowledge that I am not even phased when someone else’s mode of thought differs completely from my own.
I have found that in this city, however, I have definitely been phased.
My life has been a constant lesson in how to take life more easily and be more efficient at the same time. The delicate balance between enjoying life and being a useful member of society has plagued me since early childhood, and I have slowly gone from the extreme of being a constant bookworm and the girl who spent seven hours a night on math homework to nearing the opposite end of the spectrum, at which I found that homework was often getting done at five in the morning the day it was due. After all my years of searching the spectrum, however, I find that New Orleans is an extension of the spectrum that I have yet to even touch. Teeming with life at any nearly any hour of any day of the week, the Crescent City is literally a city that never sleeps, a city where you can find any type of person at any socioeconomic level doing just about anything you can think of doing in this fine city at any time of the day. In fact, the city comes dangerously close to inventing its own spectrum, where you can go as slowly as you want (it IS the Big Easy, after all) and still manage to accomplish a ridiculous number of things in a day, varying from holding a nine-to-five job to spending the night taking in the bright neon lights of Bourbon Street, and maybe getting some shopping, touring, sitting and relaxing, and heavy seafood eating done in between, all in one calm day interspersed with pleasant rides in the St. Charles streetcar. It’s a grand albeit sometimes exhausting way of life, and I find it hard sometimes to understand how apparently every single one of the people in this happening city manage to keep the “take it easy” mindset that is the origin of the nickname of the entire state.
I came to New Orleans to use my resources and skills however I could and help the community and the people of this city. As cliché as it is, though, I have unexpectedly found that the city is more than returning the favor.