After a recent trip to Istanbul, the speaker reflects on how their attitude toward travel and relationships has shifted with age. They used to feel obligated to stay with companions and blame themselves when things went wrong. Now they prioritize what they want: moving to a separate hotel, exploring alone, joining a walking group on impulse, without guilt or concern for others' expectations.
Chapters
My final reflections on my short holiday spent last week in Istanbul and how different my attitude towards what happened was now at this age than it would have been when I was a younger person. When I was a younger person and things weren't working out, especially if I was with somebody else, I would be thinking about, you know, that I'd possibly done something wrong and that it was my fault in some way, or that I just had to stick it out, you know, because I was there with that person and I needed to do that. Whereas now, if things aren't working out for me or they're not going in the way that I want or had hoped or expected, then I simply take myself away and just get on with it. And that's what I did. I, you know, moved to a separate hotel, did my own thing in my own time, what I wanted when I wanted, and I was really happy to do do that. And I thought how different that was than I— than the way I would have acted when I was a younger person. And I think that's one of the benefits of getting older, is that we can reflect on all of this and say, actually, you know what, I had the best time when I was just on my own, when I was wandering around the city, exploring it on my own, meeting up with people that I didn't know in a walking group, just having fun and not having to rely on somebody else, not having to wait for somebody else. Not thinking that the stuff that I was doing was stuff I didn't really want to do, just able to do the stuff that I wanted when I wanted to do it. And sure, that's a probably selfish way of thinking about the whole thing, but you know what? That's the benefit of being older, is we can be selfish in the best possible way. We can do the stuff that we want when we want to do it, and we don't really give a fuck.
