Travel, My Life Companion
Looking back some 20 odd countries and 9 years later, I’m so grateful I was not only ready but willing to wander out solo. It was finally time to explore those places on my own that had called to me through books, movies and maps. Once tethered and tortured by suffocating social pressure, moral obligation, and societal norms to tediously wait for friends’ bucket lists and calendars to miraculously align; I was free. I had uncovered the confidence and snatched up the permission to see the world at my own pace, on my own budget and through my own taste.
For dramatic effect I’d love to say I can still conjure up the exhilarating rush that came over me on the cold cobblestone streets of Prague, my first solo destination, but the bigness of it all didn’t hit me so profoundly right then. Instead, the solo travel bug that bit me had injected somewhere deep within a contagion and as it took hold of mind, body, and soul it would infectiously demand I keep going – The Nordics, Israel, Bali and Vietnam. The destinations grew more ambitious and farther away, longer itineraries followed until I found myself jobless contemplating the direction of my life on two 3-week solo adventures through Vietnam and Spain this year.
Until this point, traveling was revitalizing, satiating and awe-inspiring, a contrast to an overprogrammed and romantically compromised life at home. But suddenly I was asking more of travel than ever before. I didn’t just need travel to serve as a sanctuary of joy and renewal, I needed travel to reveal to me, well maybe not TO me but WITH me, who I was ready to become, who I was supposed to be next and why.
As I was tasting my way with abandon through magical cities like Hanoi and Hoi An and later mouthwateringly romantic cities like Cordoba, Sevilla and San Sebastian, I knew I was doing more than simply soaking up the spectacular delights of where I was – the sights, the smells and the tastes. While I was taking it all in and it was impossible not to – I still taste the Bun Cha, White Rose Dumplings, Black Pudding, Basque Cheesecake and Anchovy on Buttered Toast – I could no longer ignore the feedback coming in from assigning real meaning - for possibly the first time in my life - to the proclivities, reactions, and take-my-breath-away moments that overcame me. Here and in between, travel who I will call my life companion, showed me how to be present.
In those moments some loud and some still and quiet ,I committed though the universe had been scattering prompts for me to find everywhere well before then, to write, to share, to connect both with myself and others through the power of travel.
