The Miracle of Foreign Convenience Stores
After spending several months in Asia I had to retrain my brain not to get excited at the sign of a 7-Eleven once I got home. In Asia their air conditioned interiors were both a welcome respite from oppressive heat and a source for high quality, tasty treats! In Thailand they had Thai ice tea on tap. (It’s simply called “tea” in Thailand of course.) The sushi in Japanese 7-Eleven rivaled the best sushi restaurants at home. (Also, 7-Elevens are one of the only places to withdraw cash with an American debit card.) Every Circle K in Bali was lovingly decorated with canang sari, small palm leaf baskets of flowers and incense, which are offerings to express gratitude and maintain cosmic harmony. (No big deal.)
While Asian convenience stores are particularly special, I appreciate admiring convenience store shelves and sampling their treats everywhere I visit. From meat pies in New Zealand to Romanian pufuleți, which are essentially edible packing peanuts, I often dine at mini marts, bodegas, supérettes, and petrol station forecourt shops abroad. But at home? I rarely give convenience stores a second look. The idea of having a meal at an ampm disgusts me. It is truly not Too Much Good Stuff. Why do I love convenience stores abroad and not at home in the US? Because while I’m abroad I have a travel mindset.
The travel mindset is characterized by:
Curiosity–Desire to notice and understand, to approach with humility and freedom from expectations.
Adaptability–Open minded flexibility, willingness to try new things, roll with the punches and accept what is.
Engagement–Turning your attention toward and interacting with the moment to moment unfolding of the present circumstance.
In our day to day experience, it’s so easy to walk into a convenience store and leave all of these qualities of presence at the door. We are too focused on the task at hand, paying for gas so we can get to the next thing on our agenda, to notice what goodies might be on the shelves. We don’t even look at the treats because we know what will be there. We’ve all been to a gas station countless times before. We don’t encounter ourselves and the person behind the counter as two infinitely unique and interesting human beings but rather we see our roles, customer and employee.
Who can blame us? We have a lot going on in our lives and our brains have been shaped by evolution to seek shortcuts. There’s inherently nothing wrong with living this way, it can be efficient and effective. It’s just…kinda boring. Over-identifying with our roles, whether that’s who we are to other people or what we do for work, can contribute to burn out and a sense of ennui. Time unsatisfyingly slips by when we are on autopilot living out the humdrum of our daily routine.
Feelings of vitality and fulfillment arise from being fully present and engaged. Moving from our “role to soul,” in the words of spiritual teacher Ram Dass, feels like moving from a simple black and white drawing to an IMAX 3D movie. Ancient wisdom traditions have formal practices like yoga and meditation to help us practice focused, non-judgmental attention on the present moment even promise the final boss of awakening, enlightenment.
Traveling often helps us to identify changes we need to make in our lives. Sometimes these changes are tectonic shifts, turning our lives upside down. More often than not, however, travel reveals subtle changes, shifts in perspective, and ways of experiencing the world that could enhance our enjoyment of our life. Often we just realize that we want to bring the curiosity, adaptability, and engagement of the travel mindset home with us.
There are endless ways to cultivate these states of being in our day to day lives, anything from engaging in practices like yoga and meditation, to creating personal rituals, trying new hobbies, playing hooky once in a while, reconnecting with meaning and purpose, building community, breaking the rules, and cultivating awe. But perhaps the simplest and effective way to incorporate the travel mindset into our day to day lives is not to cram more into our lives but rather to notice and appreciate what already exists. The present moment, in all of its complexity, relative peace, and miraculous existence (we are alive?!), is available to you right now. Right now, it’s like this.