The Urgency of Life

Like many Americans, I've always moved through life with a sense of urgency. Everything has always felt like it needed to happen now, and if it didn't happen now, I somehow felt like I was already falling behind. For a long time, productivity became one of the ways I measured my own worth. If I was working, studying, planning, creating, or accomplishing something, I felt like I was doing well. If I was sitting around doing nothing, I felt guilty. Even rest somehow needed to have a purpose. I could turn relaxing into a checklist if I gave myself enough time.

Even after a knee injury forced me to slow down physically, my mind continued running at full speed. My body was being told to rest while my brain was making lists of everything I needed to catch up on. I was still thinking about school, work, future plans, money, projects, and whatever goal I had decided needed to be accomplished next. Slowing down physically didn't necessarily mean slowing down mentally. If anything, being forced to stop made me more aware of how uncomfortable I was with not constantly moving. I had become so accustomed to feeling like I needed to be somewhere, do something, or accomplish something that simply existing without a task attached to it felt almost unnatural.

Then I moved to Germany for a month.

I expected to notice the obvious things first: the architecture, the food, the language, the trains, and the fact that almost everything looked slightly different from what I was used to. Instead, one of the first things I really noticed was the pace of everyday life. At least in Darmstadt, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that not everything needed to happen immediately. People sat with their meals instead of rushing through them. Conversations could linger without someone constantly checking the time. Public transportation could be surprisingly quiet, and there didn't seem to be the same expectation that every silence needed to be filled. Strangers weren't necessarily expected to smile at everyone they passed, and someone being quiet didn't automatically mean they were angry or unfriendly.

Obviously, a month in Darmstadt doesn't make me an expert on German culture, and I don't want to pretend that my experience represents every person or every part of the country. What I experienced was simply a different set of social expectations from the ones I had grown accustomed to. That difference was enough to make me start questioning behaviors I had previously considered completely normal. Sometimes you don't realize how cultural something is until you leave the environment that taught it to you.

In America, there can be a particular kind of urgency surrounding everyday life. We are often encouraged to be productive, ambitious, available, friendly, and constantly moving toward something. There is nothing inherently wrong with ambition, and I certainly don't think Americans are incapable of slowing down, but there is often a pressure to make every moment count in some measurable way. If you're not working, you should probably be networking. If you're not networking, you could be learning something. If you're not learning something, maybe you should be exercising. And if you're doing none of those things, there is always the possibility that you will start feeling guilty for wasting time.

I had internalized that way of thinking so thoroughly that I didn't realize how much it affected me until I was somewhere else.

A Different Relationship With Time

What interested me about Germany wasn't simply that people seemed to move more slowly. It was that time appeared to have a different social meaning. A meal didn't necessarily seem like something you needed to finish so you could move on to the next thing. Sitting with someone could actually be the activity. A conversation could take its time without needing to be squeezed between appointments, errands, work, and whatever came next. Public transportation could become a place where you simply sat and waited rather than another opportunity to be productive.

Even silence felt different.

In America, silence can sometimes feel like a problem that needs to be solved. If a conversation becomes quiet, someone usually says something, makes a joke, asks another question, or reaches for their phone. We have become remarkably good at filling empty space. I didn't realize how much I participated in that until I was somewhere where silence didn't seem to bother people nearly as much.

At first, I found it strange. Eventually, I found it relaxing. There was something comforting about not needing to constantly entertain the people around me or prove that I was enjoying myself. I could sit on a train and look out the window without feeling like I should be answering emails or checking something off my list. I could have a quiet meal without feeling like I needed to be talking the entire time. The absence of constant stimulation started to feel less like emptiness and more like space.

That made me think about how much of our behavior is learned. We aren't born knowing that we should smile at strangers, make small talk with cashiers, apologize when someone else bumps into us, or answer "I'm good" when someone asks how we're doing. We learn those behaviors because the communities around us teach us what is considered polite, friendly, appropriate, or normal. Once we have learned them, they become so automatic that we stop thinking of them as cultural behaviors at all.

Travel has a funny way of making those invisible rules visible.

Performing Friendliness

One of the cultural differences I kept thinking about was friendliness. American culture places a surprisingly high value on appearing friendly. We smile at strangers, ask people how they are doing even when we don't necessarily expect an honest answer, make small talk with people standing next to us in elevators, and often feel uncomfortable when someone doesn't respond with the same level of enthusiasm.

There is something genuinely nice about that. I don't want to pretend otherwise. Some of the most pleasant interactions I've had with strangers have come from those small American habits, and I appreciate the warmth they can create. At the same time, living somewhere with different social expectations made me question how much of that friendliness is genuine connection and how much of it is simply something we have learned to perform.

Back home, I often felt like I was performing kindness rather than simply existing. I apologized for taking up space, said yes when I wanted to say no, worried about whether I was being too loud or too quiet, and felt responsible for making sure everyone around me was comfortable. I had learned that being a good person often meant being agreeable, available, and easy to interact with.

Germany challenged that idea for me. People could be polite without necessarily being performatively warm. Someone not smiling at you didn't automatically mean they disliked you. Someone being quiet didn't mean they were angry. Someone declining something didn't necessarily require a long explanation or apology. There seemed to be more room for people to simply have their own personalities without constantly reassuring everyone around them that they were friendly.

That was surprisingly freeing.

I didn't suddenly stop caring about being considerate, and I don't think American friendliness is inherently fake. Instead, I started thinking about the difference between genuine kindness and the expectation to perform kindness. There is a difference between wanting to be kind to someone and feeling like you need to constantly demonstrate that you are a good, pleasant, agreeable person. Once I noticed that difference, I started recognizing how often I had confused the two.

Being Somewhere Nobody Knows You

There was another part of the experience that had less to do with Germany itself and more to do with what happens when you remove yourself from everything familiar. When you live around the same people for a long time, they develop an idea of who you are. Your family remembers different versions of you. Your friends remember things you've done. Coworkers know how you behave at work. People develop expectations based on your history, and even when those expectations aren't negative, they can create an invisible pressure to remain consistent.

Going somewhere where almost nobody knew me gave me a strange amount of freedom. Nobody knew what I was supposed to be like, which meant I didn't feel obligated to maintain a particular version of myself. I could dress differently, spend an afternoon wandering around without explaining what I was doing, try food I had never eaten, experiment with clothes I wouldn't normally wear, or play around with makeup styles I hadn't considered before. Some of those experiments stuck, some didn't, and some made me realize that there was probably a reason I had never tried them before.

The point was that I got to find out for myself.

It became less about experiencing Germany and more about experimenting with myself. That was something I hadn't expected when I left. I thought I was going to another country to see a different place, but I ended up getting enough distance from my normal environment to notice how much of my identity had been shaped by other people's expectations and by my own assumptions about what I was supposed to be.

Culture doesn't just tell us how to interact with other people. It also influences how we understand ourselves. It teaches us what kinds of lives are considered successful, what careers are respected, what behaviors are desirable, and what it means to be a productive person. I hadn't realized how much I had internalized those ideas until I was somewhere that didn't reinforce them in exactly the same way.

The Question I Couldn't Answer

Eventually, someone asked me a question I had answered countless times before: "What do you do?" That one was easy. I could talk about school, work, marketing, writing, creative projects, or whatever I happened to be working on at the time. Then came the follow-up: "What do you want to do?" and eventually, "What is your dream job?"

For years, I always had an answer. It might have changed every few months, and sometimes the answer probably sounded completely unrealistic, but I always had something to say. I've never really been someone who plans ten or twenty years into the future. If anything, my idea of a long-term plan is usually about a year out. I like having somewhere to go without needing to know exactly where I'll end up. I'll figure out the next thing when I get there, and then I'll figure out what comes after that. It has always worked for me.

This time, though, I didn't know.

That was different.

I wasn't suddenly worried because I didn't have some perfectly organized five-year plan. I don't have those, and I've never really wanted one. What caught me off guard was that I couldn't even give myself the usual general direction. For once, I didn't have a next step sitting somewhere in the back of my mind that I could point toward and say, "Well, probably that."

And strangely, I wasn't embarrassed.

I expected not having an answer to feel like failure, but instead it felt almost freeing. I had spent so much time thinking about what I wanted to do next that I hadn't stopped to consider whether I actually wanted to keep moving at the same speed. My plans had always been relatively short-term, but they had still kept me moving. There was always a course to finish, a project to start, a place I wanted to go, a job I wanted to apply for, or something else I wanted to try.

For the first time, I didn't feel the need to immediately replace that uncertainty with another goal.

That made me think about the relationship between American culture and achievement. We often talk about ambition as though constantly wanting more is automatically a good thing. More education, more money, more experience, more promotions, more accomplishments, more productivity. Even casual conversations can become miniature interviews about what we do, what we are studying, where we work, and what we want to do next.

I don't think there is anything wrong with having goals. I like having goals. I like having something to work toward, and I have never been particularly good at sitting still when there is something I want to accomplish. The difference is that I had started to realize how easy it is to confuse having direction with always needing a destination.

Maybe I didn't need to know what the next year was going to look like yet. Maybe I could let myself be somewhere in between plans without immediately treating that uncertainty as something that needed to be fixed.

That was a much more unfamiliar feeling than not having a five-year plan ever would have been.

The People Around Me

The people I met in Germany made that realization even stronger. I met scientists, game designers, engineers, programmers, artists, and students who spoke three, four, sometimes five languages. Some had lived in multiple countries before they were twenty-five. Their lives seemed impossibly full to me, and at first I made the mistake of comparing their experiences to mine.

My marketing background suddenly felt tiny. Things I had been proud of back home seemed less impressive when I placed them next to people who had already lived in several countries, learned multiple languages, or built careers in fields I could barely explain. For a while, I felt inferior. I started mentally calculating everything I hadn't done yet, which was probably the least useful thing I could have done.

Eventually, though, I realized that I was doing exactly what I had come to Germany to question. I was turning life into a competition.

The people I met weren't necessarily trying to prove that they had lived better lives than everyone else. They had simply followed different interests. Some knew exactly what they wanted. Others were still figuring it out. Some had taken very traditional paths, while others had changed direction completely.

Their lives weren't all moving toward the same definition of success, and that was probably what I found most interesting.

It made me realize that comparison is often based on the assumption that everyone is competing for the same prize. We aren't. Someone else's accomplishments don't make mine less meaningful, just as mine don't make theirs less meaningful. Their path doesn't invalidate mine simply because it looks more impressive from the outside.

Germany wasn't teaching me that I needed to accomplish more. It was teaching me to become more curious about why I thought I needed to.

The Less Profound Lessons

Of course, not every cultural lesson I learned in Germany was some profound realization about identity and the meaning of life. Some were considerably more practical, and some were honestly just funny.

European drinking culture completely defeated me. I can barely handle a bottle of wine, and I quickly discovered that I was wildly unprepared for nights out with some of my European friends. They made drinking look effortless while I was sitting there wondering how anyone was still functioning. There was a level of confidence involved that I simply did not possess, and watching everyone else continue the night while I was already questioning my life choices was humbling.

Then there was smoking. It seemed to be everywhere. People rolled their own cigarettes while waiting for trains, standing outside bars, or sitting around talking with friends. Cigarettes seemed to function as both a habit and a social tool. Someone would ask for a cigarette or a light, and suddenly two strangers had a reason to talk.

I started carrying cigarettes and my lucky lighter around more often than I probably should have, not because I suddenly became passionate about smoking, but because it became an incredibly easy way to start conversations. Someone needed a light, I had one, and suddenly we were talking. Some of the best conversations I had began with something incredibly insignificant: lending someone a lighter, asking where they were from, talking about the train, or commenting on something happening nearby.

Those moments made me think about how culture is often found in places we don't initially consider important. We tend to think of culture as museums, historical landmarks, traditional food, festivals, art, and architecture. Those things are certainly part of it, but culture is also in the little habits people don't think twice about. It's in how people spend their evenings, how strangers interact, how long they sit at dinner, how comfortable they are with silence, and what they consider a normal way to spend a Tuesday night.

Sometimes you learn more about a place by sitting outside a bar than by visiting its most famous landmark.

What We Consider Normal

That became one of the most interesting parts of being abroad: realizing how many things I had considered universal were actually cultural. The way we eat, the way we socialize, the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we define politeness, the way we think about time, the way we measure success, and even the way we rest are all influenced by the environments we grow up in.

When you're surrounded by people who share your cultural background, these things become almost invisible. You don't question them because everyone around you is doing roughly the same thing. You assume that your way is simply the way things are done.

Travel interrupts that assumption.

Suddenly, you notice that the way you do something isn't the only way to do it. That doesn't automatically make another culture better, and I think that is one of the easiest traps to fall into when traveling. You experience something that feels refreshing and immediately decide that the country you visited has somehow figured out life while your own country has failed. Spending a month in Germany certainly wasn't enough for me to make that judgment, and honestly, I don't think there is much value in trying to.

Germany has its own problems, contradictions, social pressures, and expectations. America has plenty of things I value that I would never want to give up. There were things about Germany that frustrated me just as there were things I loved. The point wasn't to decide which culture was superior. It was to realize that there were alternatives.

There were other ways of doing things.

Once you realize that, you have the opportunity to decide which parts of your own culture you want to keep and which parts you might want to question.

The Urgency I Brought With Me

Eventually, I realized that Germany hadn't necessarily changed the way the country worked. It had changed the way I was looking at my own life. I had been living with urgency for so long that I didn't recognize it as urgency anymore. I thought constantly moving forward was the same thing as moving in the right direction, when in reality, you can be incredibly productive while moving toward something you don't actually want.

You can fill every hour of your day and still feel like you haven't lived it. You can accomplish everything you planned to accomplish and still have no idea who you are becoming. That was the part that scared me. I didn't want to come home and immediately return to the same cycle of working, studying, planning, and chasing the next thing without questioning whether I was actually enjoying any of it.

I still have goals. I still want a career. I still want to learn, create, and accomplish things. Germany didn't turn me into someone who suddenly wants to spend the rest of my life doing nothing. If anything, it helped me understand that ambition isn't something I need to get rid of. I just don't want productivity to be the only way I measure whether my life is going well.

There will always be another assignment, another application, another certification, another project, another goal. If I wait until I've finished everything before allowing myself to slow down, I'm going to be waiting forever.

What Germany Gave Me

Looking back, Germany didn't teach me to become someone new. It gave me enough distance from my normal life to question some of the things I had stopped questioning. I began noticing how often I apologized when I didn't need to, how often I said yes because saying no felt uncomfortable, how often I filled silence because I assumed silence meant something was wrong, and how often I measured my days by what I had accomplished instead of whether I had actually experienced anything.

I don't think those habits disappeared simply because I spent a month abroad. They are still part of me. I still overbook myself. I still make lists that are far too long. I still convince myself that I can accomplish twelve things in one afternoon and then act surprised when I can't. The difference is that now I recognize the pattern.

Germany also changed the way I think about culture itself. Before, I tended to think of culture as something more tangible: food, architecture, language, music, traditions, and clothing. After spending time there, I became more interested in the invisible parts of culture—the assumptions people make about time, work, friendliness, privacy, ambition, and what a good life is supposed to look like.

Those things are much harder to photograph, but they might be some of the most important things we carry with us.

Culture is not only what we celebrate. It is also how we live. It is what we consider normal without realizing that we learned it. It is the way we behave when nobody has to tell us what to do, the expectations we place on ourselves, and the things we assume everyone else should understand without explanation.

Sometimes you don't realize how deeply those expectations have shaped you until you leave.

Learning to Stop Running

I went to Germany for a month expecting to experience another country. I expected new places, new people, new food, new experiences, and probably a lot of confusion involving trains. I didn't expect to spend so much time thinking about what it means to live a good life.

The biggest thing I brought home wasn't a souvenir or a photograph. It was the realization that I don't need to rush toward every version of myself at once. I can be ambitious without being consumed by achievement. I can care about my future without sacrificing my present. I can say no without writing a five-paragraph explanation for why. I can sit quietly without assuming something is wrong. I can try something simply because I'm curious, and I can admit that I don't know what I want yet without treating that uncertainty like a personal failure.

Maybe that is what affected me most about the cultural differences I experienced in Germany. It wasn't that life there was necessarily slower or better. It was that I was exposed to a different relationship with time and social expectations. I saw people spending time without constantly explaining why it was worthwhile. I saw how different everyday life can feel when you aren't raised with exactly the same assumptions about productivity, friendliness, and urgency.

It made me realize that the urgency I had carried for most of my life wasn't necessarily a universal truth. It was something I had learned from the environment around me, reinforced by the people around me, and eventually reinforced by myself. And if it was something I had learned, perhaps it was something I could learn to question.

I don't think I'm finished figuring that out. I'm probably going to come home, make another ridiculously ambitious list, overcommit myself to something, and wonder why I did it. That's probably never going away completely. But now I know that I can stop. I can take the long way somewhere. I can sit on a train and watch the landscape pass by without feeling like I should be doing something else. I can let a conversation last longer than necessary. I can spend an afternoon wandering without needing to justify it. I can experience something without immediately asking what it is going to add to my résumé.

Germany didn't give me a new identity. It gave me enough distance to question the one I was building.

Maybe that's what travel can do at its best. It doesn't necessarily tell you who you should become. Sometimes it simply shows you that the way you've been living isn't the only way to live. It gives you another perspective, another rhythm, another set of assumptions to compare against your own, and sometimes that comparison is enough to make you realize that some of the rules you've been following were never really rules at all.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn't in a hurry to figure everything out. I didn't have a neat answer when someone asked what I wanted to do next, and I didn't feel like I needed to immediately invent one. I just knew that I was experiencing something new, meeting people I never would have met at home, and learning things about myself that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I had stayed in the same environment.

For once, I was willing to let that be enough.