The Island I Did Not See
On Growing Up Inside Beauty
Before I see Corsica, I smell it.
Not the sea first.
Something else.
Warm stone.
Dry grass.
Wild thyme crushed under the sun.
A smell that is not perfume but memory.
The airplane door opens and my body knows before my eyes.
Home.
When you grow up on an island, you do not realize it is beautiful.
It is just… normal.
The blue shutters? Normal.
The sea? Normal.
The silence between two houses in the afternoon heat? Normal.
Beauty, when it is everyday, becomes invisible.Maybe it is like that with many things in life. We only see clearly once we leave.
I left Corsica. And suddenly, it began to shine in my mind. Like distance was a filter.
Like absence was a magnifying glass.
I remember reading that memory does not give us the place back, it gives us the feeling of the place.
And that feeling becomes almost more real than reality.
When I was a child, I did not look at the cliffs.I did not stand still for the moon rising over the mountains.
I was thinking about school, about friends, about leaving.
It is strange how we dream of elsewhere while living inside what others dream of.
Now when I walk those small alleys again, I walk slower.
I notice the texture of stone. The faded paint.
The plants growing where they should not grow. Time feels different there. Not lazy. Not sleepy, Just… less rushed. There is a kind of permission in the air. To sit longer, To speak less to let silence exist without filling it. Maybe growing up means learning to see what was always there.
Yes, Corsica changes. Apartments grow.
Summer becomes louder. The island swells with bodies and movement. And yet the spine of it remains.
Rock.
Salt.
Wind.
If you love Corsica for its quiet heart, come in spring or in October.
When the island exhales. When you can hear yourself think.
There is something a bit psychological in this.
How often in life do we live inside beauty without noticing?
How many relationships, places, even versions of ourselves do we take for granted because they are familiar?
We think meaning must be extraordinary. But maybe meaning is just attention.
Simone Weil wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Maybe attention is also the rarest form of love.
Maybe leaving taught me to pay more attention.
Growing up on an island is strange. You feel protected.
Contained. And at the same time, you want the horizon.
You want the world. And then one day you are in the world. And you realize the island was shaping your eyes all along.
The light, the contrast the slowness. The way sea and mountain coexist.
Maybe we do not choose our landscapes, but they choose something in us.
Now when I stand by the water at sunset, watching the moon rise quietly above the hills, I feel something softer than nostalgia. Not longing. I am not sure what it is.
Like I am meeting an old version of myself and saying: Ah. So that is where you learned to look like this.
Maybe the real return is not geographic. Maybe it is perceptual. To look at what raised you as if you just arrived. To look at your own life as if it is already memory.
So I leave you with this:
What in your life feels ordinary today…
that one day you might miss with your whole heart?
Are you looking at it? Or are you already planning your escape?
Bisous, Sarah