Carpe diem in Serbia

 

They told me to stay connected, to be there, always online. They said I have to check all my accounts every day, mutiple times a day. And I listened. Then they told me I could find everything I needed there, staying in my house, on the bed, scrolling. All I had to do was to enter a couple of words and there it was, all the information. One morning I found myself checking my e-mail the minute I got out of the bed. I wasn’t even awake, my eyelids were glued, but I knew I had to do this because what if something had happened? I had to know.

On the other hand, they said: ”go live, build a life you are going to be proud of when you’ll have wrinkles from smiling too much”. Sew any kind of memories on your clean canvans, using any type of thread. Colored, black or white. Carpe diem, they said, carpe diem.

But how? How can I live the moment when I know I have to check everything? When did it happen? When did we replace the smell of a good book with the icy light of the computer screen? When did we choose to send a private message than invite out on a date? When did we decide that sharing our meetings, dinners, gifts is more important than actually making them happen? Why don’t we just lose it for a minute, look around, laugh with our friends, eat cupcakes, enjoy the sun, the music, every little particle surrounding us? Why is this so hard?

I found out it’s not that hard. You just have to go to Serbia, in the summer, to the Exit festival. Having nothing but a bag of clothes, a tent and something to sleep on, we went there in the middle of the summer. We had our phones, but we couldn’t call back home. We sometimes had internet connection, but only for a short while.

So we were disconnected from our lives as usual, but connected to something bigger.

The city? Novi Sad, a small but full-of-life town in Serbia. Although summer was at its peak, the streets were sprinkled with young voices and colorful clothes. Just like the buildings. During the day we would go around the center, trying to feel the vibe, the pulse of Novi Sad. It was quiet and peaceful. We could hear students laughing every now and then, but most of the time the only sounds were those made by little girls running to their grandmothers and young people going to the supermarket or the whispers coming from the little restaurants .

At night, the city came to life. All the peacefulness had vanished somewhere, hiding in the corners, waiting for the sun to rise. On the road to the castle where the Exit festival was held, we could see life in its real meaning. Music filled the air, not too loud, just enough to invite you to go faster. Groups of young people from all over the world were laughing, taking pictures, making friends. From the bridge, on our way to the castle, we stopped to look around. Lights of all colors were covering the Danube river with spots of magic. So this is what carpe diem means:. No phones, no checking, no virtual connections. Instead, we talked to a lot of people of various nationalities and the only thing we had to think about was what stage we should stop at first and the only connections we had to make were holding hands so that we would not get lost in the crowd. But we did get lost in the moment, in the music, in the chambers of the students’ dorm, singing songs and enjoying stories from different countries. These were my threads and last summer was my canvas.

This trip was the moment when I realized that I had to start living my life the way I like, that I have the courage to change something. Serbia helped me make the change by showing me how to value every moment, how to make the most of every second, how to discover different parts of me.

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