Monday, July 16, 2012

Living Life Like a Tourist





Ever since Drake released “The Motto”, it has been near impossible to avoid hearing the acronym “YOLO” just about every single day (no matter how obnoxious it may be). Now I’m all for taking chances and living your life to the fullest potential, but somehow our generation of for lack of a better word, idiots, have interpreted “you only live once” as lets all drink ourselves stupid and make decisions that we will probably regret in about five minutes. This is really rather unfortunate, because we really do only live once and we should take advantage of all of the wonderful opportunities that we have (again this doesn’t mean jumping off of a balcony after being bitten by a spider to see if you accumulated any new super powers). Therefore, I have come up with my own little motto: live life like a tourist.

I came up with this not so catchy phrase last night in my car when I was thinking about how much fun I have been having recently with my friends from England who are here visiting. So far we haven’t done anything too extravagant, just days in various beach cities, going out with friends, and eating out in more than just the regular spot. Even though I have sacrificed a few hours of sleep over it, these past few days have definitely been worth it. When you are on vacation, playing tourist, you aren’t going to waste away the day watching season three of The Bachelor or mindlessly playing Call of Duty for hours. No, these things are a giant waste of precious time. The truth is that we do only live once, and tourists seem to understand and appreciate their time. If we would all glance up from Instagram or Facebook for more than a minute, we would realize that not everyone is lucky enough to live in such a beautiful area with amazing places to visit and things to do. Next time you have a day off, or an opportunity to do something fun, don’t be a lazy bum sitting in front of the TV, but go out and play tourist. Take advantage of your time because in the words of Drake, you only live once.