What happens when you move to the land of your dreams

On a recent Sunday, I was biking back into the city of Milan after a day traversing the countryside, along a series of waterways that bore the centuries-old footprints of Leonardo da Vinci.

As the city’s tall apartment blocks and noisy streetscapes began to envelop me anew, I couldn’t help but think: This is all kind of ugly.

It was, truthfully, not the most beautiful part of Milan, as is often the case of a city’s periphery. In place of the historical center’s architectural charm were anonymous modern facades, yawning intersections and chaotic shop signs.

I found myself resisting the acknowledgment of this reality. That even a small slice of my newly-chosen urban home should be less-than-beautiful felt, somehow, like a failure. (On my part, or on the part of Italy, I wasn’t sure).

As I round the corner on a year living here, I’ve been reckoning more and more with the realization that, sometimes, things are bad, or ugly, or annoying. Breaking news: Life has ups and downs! Nowhere is perfect!

And yet, I seem to have placed this pressure on myself, and on my new city: Everything, all the time, must be beautiful and sparkly. If not, time to pack it in and return to America, a place that is definitely not marred by urban sprawl and lazy architecture. (This is a joke).

At the same time that I apply this unrealistic standard of beauty to every inch of Italy, I’ve noticed another, parallel phenomenon: I am becoming inured to some of the charm that is often part of my Italian existence.

Things that I once coveted, that fueled years-long fantasies—like hiking in the Alps, or enjoying a perfect scoop of gelato—are now just the stuff of my everyday life.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up the stairs of the metro, the Duomo’s gleaming pink-marble facade looming right in my face, and gone on my way without even acknowledging it.

I think these are two sides of the same coin, which starts tumbling through the air the moment you move to a place that used to be your vacation. Back and forth it goes, flipping between an indifference to beauty, and an intolerance for the lack of it.