* Please note: All photos in today's blog, including the title image, were taken of the author while traveling. *
Travel is a curious thing. Home defines us, yet we also travel to find ourselves. We explore, we rejuvenate, we laugh, we snap photographs and post them all over social media when we return.
What do we gain by those experiences? What is that draw that has us pulling out passports, packing bags, and booking flights?
The German word "fernweh" means "an ache to get away and travel to a distant place, a feeling even stronger than wanderlust."
Humanity is not meant to be endured. As Biff Loman says in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: "[...] it’s a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two week holiday, when all you really desire is to be outdoors with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still—that’s how you build a future."
Well, that is a bit depressing.
But to so many people, Biff speaks truth. We, as a society, work in jobs we do not love or even necessarily like. We live within the confines of cubicles and deadlines, planning for the next event or milestone, never really aware of more than the next thing that needs to be done.
But we are also so apart from our day-to-day living that we rely on escapism to even make it through. We go through the motions, without ever really being mindful of ourselves -
the way we are on vacation.
I love my job. But I also love to learn, experience, create, and explore. I love to rejuvenate, refocus, and restrengthen.
Vacations are as significant to my well-being as reading, or going to the gym.
Humans need change once in awhile. We need a bit of adventure to keep that spark of humanity in us, shocking us out of complacency.
Maybe we recognize that. Maybe that is what drives us to book vacations, so we spark that awakeness back in ourselves.
I have been blessed to go on quite a few vacations, and there are many more planned for my future. I generally come back from vacation, well, firstly sad to be done, but after, refreshed and ready to reattack my life.
And by attack, I mean walk calmly back in, nod at everyone, and pick things back from where I left them.
So if I love my job, love my life, and do not need to escape, why do I travel?
Because this world is an incredible place, and while I live in one of the most awesome places on this planet, there are innumerable other places out there I want to see. As Tolkien so famously said, "The worlds is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page."
I like to read, and one page is never enough.
Do you travel? What drives you to travel? I would love to hear your thoughts, and how you think that relates to writing. Please comment below or on my site here. And don't forget to subscribe to my site!