I remember distinctly sitting in my dorm room in Ireland listening to these twenty-somethings from all over the world talk about missing home, their lives, and all the different people in them. And not feeling anything. Nothing. I remember them rushing to book their flights home, and doing anything to put off finding mine. Roaming around the country for an extra month just to fill up some need for more. Same thing in Austin. Blank. Nothing. No desire for anything but more new. More exploring. I just wanted to be exactly where I was. Then New York and Hawaii, and Sydney, just kept filtering through my eyes. Through them. And then something happened along the way. I stopped feeling unattached. I fell in love, rented an apartment, got a job, then owned a business. And now, two days away from home and I want my bed, my boyfriend and my life. It's amazing. There's still this need to roam and explore. That'll always be there. I just don't need to be surprised to be happy. Traveling brought me into the present, with the amazement of everything that was around me. But I don't need it anymore. It's not that I won't or don't want to travel, I just don't need it to feel alive.
4 comments:
WOW perfectly said. I love how you articulated the growth of these feelings, i feel exactly the same way!
Glad it hit home for someone :)
Sam . . . GREAT . . . just great . . . but (being the Devil's Advocate that I am ;) ) I might suggest (maybe because I found this true for me, when I let my passport expire, chose instead to write about my travels) that is not wanderlust that has died, that same 'exploring' has simply been shifted to Internal things . . . to your Self . . . once a wanderer, always a wanderer . . . merely the territory that has changed. Walk on, Darlin' . . . - Scott
And this, from an environmentalist of the 60's:
There is not as much wilderness out there as I'd like; there is more inside than we know.
Yeah . . . Walk on . . . - Scott
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