It's 4am. My alarm clock is screaming and shaking my brain into semi-consciousness. For the 4th time this month. My eyelids lift as quickly as they drop back down again. My eyes remain tightly closed like a truculent child with his arms crossed, daring me to action. Though my will to rise is hollow and shaky, my mind is alert and steady. “My flight. My flight is in 3 hours.”
I force my eyes open and barely recognize the room I am in. The pictures on the walls do not belong to me. There isn’t the smell of fresh premade coffee in the coffeemaker because I don't have one here. The bedspread doesn’t have the soft scent of the non-hypoallergenic detergent I use at home. I roll over and spy my packed suitcase in the corner by the door. “Oh, yes. I am in Thailand.” The fog cupping my brain begins to lift willing my body to follow suit. “Body, I need to go to the airport,” I groan.
After 3 months on the road, I am about to catch a 22-hour flight back home. Somewhere between my ascension from my temporary bed in Chiang Mai to my collapse into my permanent one in New York, while rushing to catch my connecting flight in Guangzhou, China, I will lose the only coat I had to shield me the 11-degree Fahrenheit temperature that awaits me in NYC after departing the warm embrace of the 75-degree temperature in Thailand. I will almost pass out on my 2nd flight and need to be moved to a cooler section of the huge, packed Boeing aircraft. The airline will accidently reroute my suitcase, which holds my boots, to another country, causing me to step out of JFK in only sandals during the month of December. (I will receive it 2 days after my arrival home. One day before New Year’s Eve).
So, why travel? Because we have to. Because distance and difference births creativity. Because as a media professor, producer and writer who purports daily the benefits of global connectivity in our advancing digital world, I still seek to touch, taste, feel and physically experience the food, languages, art, culture and people who exist in the cities and villages across our macrocosm. Because the annoyances of travel are eclipsed by the excitement of waking up someplace different and meeting someone new. Because work is stressful. Because, let’s face it, familiar faces and places can become tedious and stale. Because while in the midst of ultimate boredom with my routine, I searched online and found a great flight deal. Because I have never been to that city. Or that restaurant and museum. Because New York is thrilling and highly-cultured, but also ruthless and fast-paced. Because change is an essential ingredient for growth. Finally, because despite the grievances, travel is fun.
Full disclosure. Just over 2 years ago, after the turn of another significant natal decade, I considered myself to be a fairly accomplished person. Fuller disclosure. I didn't consider myself fulfilled, and had no clue of what was next in my life or in the world outside it. With both a Bachelors and a Master’s degree under my belt, almost 20 years of varied professional experience, a coterie of close friends near and far, the frightening return to the dating scene with my friends’ introduction to an astounding collection of dating apps after I had pulled the plug on a 4-year relationship, a mother whom I adore but whose medical care was eating away my life and joy while I took charge of her health issues as she battled and continues to battle dementia and slew of other ailments, carrying a backbreaking load of work stress along with a stirring desire to reward myself with a little self-care, I decided to get lost. So, in 2015, I booked a flight out. As simplistic as it might now seem, the only thing I promised myself was that I would try to return to the states a New Free Me. I would hit countries I had never been: new. Although, I would work while traveling, I would not work on certain days, period: free. And I would begin to devote time to healing and becoming more self-aware: me.
That is when the travel bug that had overtaken me years earlier, when I trapesed country-to-country through Europe on railcars in my 20’s, circled and came in for another kill. My need for personal fulfillment laced with the political situation in America and presidential shift in 2017 further beckoned my escape. Two years after my initial NFM sojourn and 8 new countries later, I had to ask myself, “Am I running away?"
Here’s the thing. Frequent travel is sometimes viewed as willful and self-indulgent. Routine sojourns are often seen less like journeys to liberation and more as one’s fleet from domestic responsibilities. Those who sneer at someone’s regular departures also secretly crave the same freedom and sense of adventure. The truth is that making the decision to travel is one of the most responsible things one can do for one’s self. It is a gift gilded in personal growth and not in tangible, material gain. And this is why its value will never erode. When we leave the place where and people with whom we spend most of our time, our consciousness awakens to all the things that had been suppressed by our chronic conformity. We relax. We expand. We become more aware of ourselves and those around us. We evolve more quickly. This heightened cognition especially helps when people are going through difficult times or life transitions. That said, home can be many places and many places can be home.
In November, I sat next to an American man from Oregon on a flight from Denpasar to Bangkok. We have since become close friends. Two months earlier, he quit his IT job, sold his house and 4 cars. He, his wife and 4-year old daughter are traveling the world for the next 1-3 years. He’s currently temporarily settled in Kuala Lumpur. In response to my text query: “Does Malaysia feel like home? Are you happy there?” He messaged back:
“I seem to be circling around happiness from different vectors: comfort, community, sense of belonging, et al. Like the more positive memories you have in a place, the more you have an affinity for that place, you know? I appreciate how traveling can challenge one’s notions of normal, how you get a chance to experience new things and overcome challenges, and how people from everywhere I’ve been, are at once different, but really largely the same; and largely kind. We are amiably sociable critters, us humans. So, home and happiness is basically where the dopamine hits, I guess.”
It comes down to this. Many people here and there might remain the same or be different, based on our perspective. But travel challenges and changes us. We begin to feel and see ourselves and others in a different light. Hence, we travel not to find or escape home but, most importantly, to come home to ourselves.
