What if the answer was an island

Disconnecting to seek clarity is pretty fashionable these days, and an island is the perfect representation of isolation. You and all the other people on this island are literally disconnected from the rest of the world by a large body of water. The closest airport is a ferry ride and hundreds of kilometers away.

There's no better place to sit with your thoughts and really think about whatever you really (really) want. Or just to hide away. It’s something I often think about. I don’t really have any reason to do so, but if I wanted to hide somewhere, it would probably be on some remote island, as far as possible from everything.

Another metaphor commonly used is the island as a place of self-discovery. Cut off from the world, you might try to find who you truly are. In this case, islands can represent a fresh start, a break from the past, a blank slate where you get to decide who you want to be next.

I guess it’s fair to say the longer you stay on an island, the more it tends to mess with your head. I’m not blaming them or saying it in a negative way. It’s just something they tend to do.

Don’t get me wrong, some islands can be a lot of fun if you want them to. You can fall asleep and wake up to the sound of the waves in the ocean, and you can decide to spend the day on a party boat with strangers, or just lounge on the beach all day all by yourself. I’ve done both, and decided to do them only after finishing my first iced coffee. There's something refreshing about the freedom to do whatever you want. Just the simple yet underrated pleasure of doing whatever you feel like doing, right at this moment.

Islands can also be very beautiful — exceedingly beautiful, in fact. The way the light reflects on the water to look powder blue in the morning, blindingly white in the middle of the day, and dark emerald in the sunset light. The infinite stretches of white sand everywhere you look at when you lay down on the beach. Everything is a picture asking to be taken and framed, and yet, none of them quite capture how beautiful this place really is.

But there's a part of me that can't help but return to the deeply introspective nature of being on an island. The way they mess with your head and get you to get lost in your own thoughts. The longer you sit there, staring at the horizon, the less you know what you are looking at, and start thinking about nothing and everything at the same time.

This island gave me one unexpected but very fitting answer. I’m still unsure about how I got there, but I no longer have a return flight to Berlin.