Paris, France 75011

Paris is a city located in Western Europe. It's coordinates are 48° 51' 44'' North 2° 21' 3'' East, and it's located on a river that we've come to call the Seine. Over 2 million live in the city, and over 12 million live in the greater metropolitan area. Earliest human settlement may have been around 4200 BC, and for a time it was the most populated city in the world. There is an imaginary line encompassing about 87 square kilometers of earth, streets, buildings, and people; the area inside this line can be called, for practical purposes, "Paris." Most of the people that reside within this line speak French, though not all...


Paris is not a concept.
It is not a dream.
It is not the set of a movie,

or a poem,
or a place where everyone falls in love.

Not everything in Paris glitters, and certainly not everything that glitters in Paris is gold.

Paris is just a space. It's a space that sometimes smells like fresh flowers shops and bread, and sometimes smells like piss and cigarettes. It can feel romantic and beautiful, or dark and claustrophobic. It's history is complex and tumultuous, and perhaps on a macro-level, its inhabitants have certain characteristics in common. It's a city, unique, but sill just a city.

That's it.

I've been reflecting about this a lot lately. Many of my fellow study abroad students seem to have become disenchanted by the city at this point in their experience. Their initial love-affair has been replaced with frustration and discontent, because Paris and the people in it are not living up to their expectations.

It's just like they went to Disneyland thinking it's the Happiest Place on Earth, but now are tired of the crowds and the noise and the ridiculous prices. They may have even realized it's mostly just an elaborate facade. And to these people I say: if Disneyland is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, then just be happy while you're there! I mean, sheesh! Make it magical!

By saying that, I am only implying that if you expect Paris to be the "City of Love", and not just a pile of concrete and metal and money and people, then you should live as if it is. Live like you're in the most romantic city in the world, and that's exactly what it will be! If you feel must delude yourself into believing Paris is that media-constructed concept that you expected, I think it can be the City of Light, the City of Love, or City of Whatever the heck you want it to be! (although perhaps not the City of Extra Large Ice Filled Drinks—it will probably never be that.).

It is the concept of Paris, not as a physical space but as an idea, that conflicts with reality. If our expectations are romantic and immaterial, but our judgment is realistic, there will always be friction.

Paris is not a lover. It's not an entity in itself (although some, who know the city well, may rightfully argue with me here). To fall in love with it, or to hate it for not living up to expectations, is a little bit, well... silly.

We can only expect what our minds can already comprehend and what we have gathered from previous experiences. Expectations, in that sense, are not something that we should desire if we are adventurous people that seek the unknown. If they must exist at all, expectations should be defied, exceeded, and always shaped by new experience and perspective.

So am I surprised, or upset that in this place called Paris, everyday is not a scene from an Audrey Hepburn movie? That life is not a daydream? That not everyone I meet on the street is a poet or an artist? You mean, this isn't utopia?

That life here is just—life. That like life anywhere, it's just a little bit un-fulfilling and incomplete, but ready to be seized?

I'm not surprised, and I'm definitely not upset. 

In fact, I do love Paris. I love Paris, as it has been for me. 

I speak not of the entire city of Paris, which is too vast, populated, and complex for one person to know and understand.
I speak not of the Paris of movies and songs and poems, nor of the setting for the daydreams of fashionistas or artists or hopeless romantics.
I speak of this place as it is for me, as I experience it now, and as I will remember it later. Paris is what I have learned, and what I have seen. It is how I have grown and how I have found God in a new place—on this particular spot on the globe.

Paris is just a name.

It's an idea that is the prison for a real place that can,
as can any stretch of ground our feet touch,
be as beautiful and poetic as we would like it to be.