Why We Travel
A note on the present and reflection on the past
Usually my third post of the month is a video update on my memoir-writing process. Accessible only to paid subscribers, it’s a behind-the-curtain look at my progress, successes, and struggles. (If you’re curious, you can choose to “unlock” any one of those posts for free!)
This month is a little different. It’s been a whirlwind of a week (I feel like I write this a lot), and I feel a little ungrounded, in a space of un-resolve, squirmy with the urge to resist uncomfortable uncertainties and get back to my regularly-scheduled programming. Interestingly, because my book is a memoir, I can feel myself living it right now. Like the truth from the mouth of an unreliable narrator, I am being stretched. Ultimately, I am glad, because this is where growth happens. But the high-achieving part of me balks at anything that pulls me off course from my audacious goals.
All that to say, though I feel myself testing the self-trust that is a strong theme in my memoir, I haven’t actually written all too much for it lately. It’s been a bit of a relief, actually - knowing that I have this time coming up when I’ll be able to focus more directly on it, I’m opened up to greater adventure, spontaneity, life (and yes, Substack) for the time being.
So today’s post is a good, ol’ fashioned text post, free for everyone. It’s one from the archives that I haven’t yet published on Substack. Written last year, it’s a vignette I read now through the haze of time, but one that feels reflective and hopeful. I hope you enjoy. Read on below.
Why We Travel
Isn’t it funny how the elements conspire to create little vignettes of connection? How the tables are arranged a certain way behind a beachside hostel in Waikiki, such that only two are covered by a light tarp, and when it begins to drizzle, four people are forced to crowd around them? You look up from your reading and give a polite but tight-lipped smile to the woman on her phone now across from you. You vaguely notice the people at the other table, a young woman unwrapping a burger and a black-haired man cracking open a 24oz Tecate. He speaks first.
“Man, I thought it didn’t rain in paradise!” he says through a smile and Australian accent to your little cluster. You all look up tentatively, with the restrained eagerness of those who want to connect but are unsure if that’s what everyone else wants. It seems they do, and you all murmur your agreement and laugh at the sky’s folly.
“When did you all get in?” the Australian man asks. You remove your headphones and close your book, sensing that a conversation is unfolding, and you’d rather partake in that than continue your solitary immersion into the life of a fictional Russian prisoner (though it’s a very good story, and you carefully mark your spot to return to later). For the first time, you look more closely at the company around you. The Australian is young and confident, though bleary-eyed with the wear of travel (and later, with the last sips of his second beer). Tattoos plume like smoke from the open neck of his Hawaiian shirt, perhaps a bit on the nose for the current location, though it fits him, and you imagine he’d wear (and probably has worn) this anywhere.
Everyone has arrived pretty recently except you, and you revel in the odd superiority of knowing a place just slightly longer than someone else. The woman across from you speaks with a Scottish accent. She shares that she’s from Edinburgh and has been renting out her home and traveling the world for months now. She’s 63 and retired from her postal service job, but she misses all the walking. The last traveler brought near by the rain is a 22-year-old student from New Hampshire, preparing to do research on the island. She’s green and excited but listens mostly, content to sit back and absorb the stories of her new companions.
You all talk about your travel plans and where you’ve been thus far - tales that live in the well-worn walls and threadbare seats of hostel living rooms - and you learn that the Australian has been traveling for 10 months through South America and is on his way home. He speaks with the weariness of one who has migrated miles, fleeing the shackles of capitalism and the version of success he is supposed to chase. He’s not quite sure what he’s after, but he casually throws out a provocative hypothesis, eyeing your little band to see how it lands.
“I think all travelers are running from something,” he says, and it’s clear he means you, people like those in this rain-huddle that cast convention to the wayside in favor of the zest of life. He continues, sharing his disdain for the suited-up man he was becoming and his simultaneous disenchantment with the selfishness of travel, coupled with his desire to contribute something more to the world.
The Scottish woman pipes up. “I think I travel for love. I think if I keep traveling, maybe one day I’ll find it.”
You’re struck by the simplicity and vulnerability in her statement, shared so earnestly in a desire to be heard. Most surprising to you is how ageless this sentiment is - the following morning at breakfast, a 50-year-old man from Las Vegas tells you with little preamble that he’s just inherited a great sum of money, retired early, and begun traveling in search of love.
You wonder what your own truth is. Are you running from something? Or perhaps towards love? You think of the fear of becoming static or of having to advocate for what you want rather than leave. You think of the love you’ve stumbled into in far corners of the globe. And then you reflect on the tenacious hold adventure has on your heart, how she tugs your very soul with the promise of challenge and growth and freedom, how your song becomes effortless and your poetry music, and your mind is content to while away the hours with the ebb and flow of pure awareness.
Maybe you are running from something - maybe it’s all that’s not this. And maybe you are seeking love. But if you are, it’s the love that spills out through your pores, the sweat that only comes when you’re doing something you didn’t know you could do, dirt under your fingernails, raw with cuts and blisters, chin up to the sun.