we do all sorts of things for mental clarity - we sing in the car; we cry in the shower (just me?); we dance in our underwear; we eat 5 cent candy like we're 10 years old... and we travel.
we leave where we are, to find another life in a place unknown.
and so... i travel. i travel to escape reality. i travel to remind myself of what goes on beyond my visual and comprehensive scope. i travel to remember those i miss. i travel to miss those i remember. i travel to realize who i do not miss, and who i am trying to forget. i travel with my life in my bag, with the realization that i am what is in my suitcase - and that the items i carry with me on a short (or long) trip symbolize that which is most important - and that which i must treasure. i have found more about my heart, my soul, my loves, my hopes, my head, and my person from being alone in a city by myself, then i could ever find moving through my life one day at a time. up at 6, work by 7:30, work until later than i should, eat dinner, go to sleep.
Pico Iyer wrote this incredibly poignant essay on why we travel. |
| originally from forever tastes so pretty |
'We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again -- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, "The Philosophy of Travel." We "need sometimes," the Harvard philosopher wrote, "to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what." '
and so... i travel. i am leaving to visit a friend in california tomorrow for 5 days. this will be 5 days spent with someone i miss dearly, and love spending time with. this will be 5 days spent thinking about me and my relationships. this will be 5 days spent thinking: "the sovereign freedom of traveling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head."