A thought for all you travellers out there.
My displacement anxiety has been flaring up again lately, a bit like a bad knee that you can ignore or live with most of the time but when it starts to play up can become crippling. I ahve been travelling for almost exactly 1 year now, I've seen and done so many things in a concentrated amount of time, and while I've enjoyed it thoroughly, I found myself flicking through a friend's travel pics and thinking "oh, I wish I was travelling again". I just don't seem to be satisfied these days.
Those of us with the desire to broaden our horizons and see the world set off with stars in our eyes and an appetite for adventure in our bellies. We are told that we can achieve anything we set out to do; yes, you single young female, you can travel through 3rd world countries by yourself on $10 a day not knowing where you will sleep that night. Yes, you can weasel out of sticky situations with gypsies, Zambian border officials or angry Japanese (snow-)monkeys. Yes, you can see the Great Wall of China, teach poor Cambodian kids about photography and order sake & udon in Japanese at a local noodle bar in Tokyo. But what do you do after all that?
Normal life seems so... mundane in comparison, doesn't it? Even when you're still 'travelling' and living in an exciting new environment, getting up, going to work, going home, and doing it all over again tomorrow seems so... lame. What the hell is gonna happen when I go back home? HOME home?
So my question to you is:
Is travel an experience - something to enjoy at the time of experiencing it?
Is travel a possession - a collection of experiences (and in my case, photos), memories to add to the library, one more place to add to the ever-growing list, is my list longer than yours, what places are going on the list next?
Or, is travel a drug - something that takes you on an amazing ride, showing you things you've never seen or experienced before, heightens your senses and generally blows your mind? And, like a drug, do you need more and more to reach that same high? Do you become desensitised, dissatisfied, harder to please? Do you find yourself thinking, dreaming about your next one? And do you suffer from withdrawal when you don't get it?
Yes
But there's no cold turkey for this drug. There's no recovery. It stays in your system. And the real question is: is that even a bad thing? Is this just the price we pay for conquering the world at a young age?
Your thoughts?
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Completely agree with the drug comment. My first major trip was 11 years ago when I was 16. Went to Nepal, and I have never stopped dreaming of my next destination. I havent been able to stay in a job for more than 12 months because nothing seems to challenge me like travelling any more...
ReplyDeleteboo...
but I wouldnt change it for the world!
This post rang some bells with me. I didn't do my first big trip until 2008 when I was 28 years old, and it was around the States. But when I got home I pined for it so badly. Even though most of it had been pretty lonely I looked back on it like it was the most wonderful time of my life. I just couldn't wait to get away again, but I had no money.
ReplyDeleteThen, after a few months, I fell in love with a guy back home and that took my mind off it for a while. But I always had this itch to get up and go again. So I went to Tibet and it was the end of my relationship.
Well, I don't know if the itch ever goes away. But it is like a drug. Is it a substitute for real life or is it more real than real life? Will we miss out on life by staying on the road? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I should have got my travel out of my system when I was a teenager, or in my early 20s. But maybe that would just mean I'd be even more addicted to it now.
It's hard to know.
It sounds like you're on the arc of travel. It starts off a little addictive and you overdose on the sensations and experience. If you keep travelling you learn to adapt to things as though they are normal, which in some ways reduces the intensity of the experience itself. Then you balance that with a sense of home, somewhere, anywhere. So in time you can keep that excitement of exploring new worlds that broaden the horizon, returning to familiar people and places that feed your soul, and having a place to call home that lets you reflect on the treasures along the way. In a sense it doesn't matter *when* the next trip is coming, it just matters to know that there is one coming! With each journey you see your home a little differently, and with each time at home you view your travel a little differently. Isn't that nice?
ReplyDelete