How to Relax
Parking in Lisbon is a particular kind of stress. Narrow streets built for horses. Sidewalks that double as parking spots. The universal gesture of frustrated drivers circling the same blocks. The quiet competition for spaces. The mental mathematics of whether that spot is actually legal or just temporarily ignored by police.
So when my partner and I drove to a dinner last week with friends, I was prepared for the usual hunt.
But as I pulled into a parking lot near their building, something shifted. A recognition. I'd been here before. Many times, actually. My hands knew the turn. My body knew where the ticket machine stood. My nervous system, which had been gearing up for battle, suddenly...settled.
It was such a small thing. A parking lot. But in that moment of recognition, I felt my entire body change states.
These friends are also expats, also travellers. They keep Lisbon as their base but are rarely here. We were comparing notes on recent trips, upcoming journeys, the logistics of lives lived in motion. We visit many corners of the world, yet here we were, in this small city, finding ourselves returning to the same place.
"I love the novelty of travel," my friend was saying, "but lately..." She paused, searching for words. "Lately, I'm exhausted before I even leave."
I knew exactly what she meant. Not tired in the body, but tired in some deeper system. The part of us that's constantly evaluating, constantly adjusting, constantly asking: Is this safe? Where's the exit? What are the rules here?
There's a switch in our bodies most of us don't know we have. The sympathetic nervous system: fight or flight, scan and assess, stay ready. And the parasympathetic: rest and digest, settle and restore, let go.
I used to think these states were about actual danger. Tigers and cliffs and genuine threats. But sitting at that dinner table, I realized how much of life is spent in sympathetic activation. Not from real danger, but from newness itself.
Every new city. Every unfamiliar restaurant. Every hotel room where I wake up forgetting where I am. Each one asks my nervous system to stay vigilant. To keep scanning. To never quite relax.
Travel puts us in sympathetic activation. It's not bad, it's why travel feels exciting, expansive, and alive. Our senses sharpen. Colours seem brighter. We notice everything because our body thinks we need to.
But it takes resources. Tremendous resources. A subconscious expenditure that happens whether we notice it or not. Our body is running programs in the background: mapping escape routes we'll never need, memorizing faces we'll never see again, trying to understand if that sound is normal or notable.
It's draining when it's continuous. When you live in perpetual arrival, you never actually arrive.
The conversation drifted to what actually helps us relax. Not the marketed version of relaxation, like spa days and meditation apps, but the real thing. The deeper settling.
"Reading an author I know," someone said. "When I recognize their rhythm, their voice, I just...sink into it."
"Coffee with my regular friend," another offered. "The one where we don't need to catch up because we never really fell behind."
I thought about my own list. The old Portuguese lady at the café who nods when I enter. The way my feet know the route to the farmer’s market. The parking lot that remembers me.
When something is familiar, my nervous system relaxes. It almost doesn't matter if the environment is chaotic or calm. That busy café where I know the rhythm, where my body knows the acoustic pattern, where the chaos is familiar chaos, I can relax there more deeply than in a peaceful place I've never been.
"What about scrolling?" my partner asked. "That's familiar. We do it every day."
But we all knew the answer. Scrolling social media, watching YouTube videos are familiar but not settling. The nervous system knows the difference. Digital familiarity keeps one in sympathetic activation. Always scanning, filtering, trying to separate signal from noise. Your thumb knows the motion, but your body never quite trusts the environment.
It's the difference between a familiar parking lot and a familiar slot machine. One lets you rest. The other keeps you pulling the lever.
Four years in Lisbon. Four years of saying yes to invitations, to events, to coffees with near-strangers who became familiar faces. The openness and curiosity that brought me here has, without my noticing, built something else: a web of familiarity.
The people feel familiar now. The roads feel familiar. Not routine, but familiar. There's a difference. Routine can be a cage. Familiar is a foundation.
I've started designing for this. Another suitcase that lives in the places I return to. The same brand of clothing so my body doesn't have to adjust. A travel pack where everything has its place. Not minimalism—portable familiarity.
These might seem like small optimizations, but they're not about efficiency. They're about giving my nervous system permission to relax. To trust. To stop scanning and to start settling. To be present instead of vigilant.
My friend's daughter reads the same book every night. Has for months. She knows every word, every picture, every place to turn the page. We call this childish, but maybe children understand something we've forgotten: repetition isn't boring. It's how you go deeper.
We're taught to grow out of this. To seek variety, novelty, and growth through change. But what if some growth comes through return? Through knowing something so well that you can finally stop monitoring it and start actually experiencing it.
As we left dinner, walking back to that familiar parking lot, I thought about my own patterns. How I tend to park in the same kind of spot, never the closest, always with an easy exit. Order the same kind of food. Choose the same kind of friends.
Parking in Lisbon is still stressful. The narrow streets haven't widened. The competition for spaces hasn't eased. But I know where the parking lots are now. I know which ones remember me. And in that knowing, that small, unglamorous knowing, my body has found something I didn't know I was looking for.
Permission to finally relax.
And that is how I learned to relax.
