It’s hard not to make stories while you’re traveling. Yes, every place you travel to inscribes a permanent mark on you as an individual and perhaps that’s what makes exploring small and big corners of the world so worth it. The best part of traveling comes along when it compels you to move out of your comfort zone, when you’re somehow forced to do things you’d never do and when you learn new things, meet new people, harness new thoughts. If you haven’t undertaken that journey yet, you haven’t experienced the magnificence of travel.
On a philosophical note, all through our life, we are constantly striving to make a place for ourselves. We are either scuffling with the job we are working at or trying to get over those emotions that bother us. There’s too much to cope up with and experience with every passing day. But, what does this have to do with moving out, getting away from the humdrum of life, taking a few days off and living through the entirety of this world? Your travels, your stories, your struggles and your encounters with nature make a difference; not only in the way you live and perceive things but also in the way you realize your strengths and move over towards better things in life.
There’s a very beautiful quote in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love which says:
“But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?”
That’s the splendor of letting travel mould you and help you recover from the desolation that survival holds to. I believe that’s the foremost reason we all feel like ‘running away’ every time we are faced with hardships and grief. To think of it, actually doing it, going away for some time, not in the hope of forgetting who we are but with the optimism of finding ourselves, is the best way to come to terms with our own selves.
In A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett wrote these great lines:
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? When you go out, undertake a journey, embrace some struggles and make your own tales, you look at everything with new eyes, in a better perspective. I believe it also gives you the strength to have faith in who you are and what you ought to be. It makes you independent, in the most desirable manner so that when you come back to the same life, you are not only ‘all right’ but also rejuvenated.
Another beautiful way of thinking about this is that we get to expand our vision and see that we are one of the minutest parts of the universe and the world is huge; accommodating us, our desires and our problems within its grips. And yet, every time we travel to a new city, a new country, we still find reasons to smile, to laugh, to live because we tend to recognize that there’s a world out there that’s so much more fulfilling and complete.
Perhaps that’s the reason Roman Payne wrote in Rooftop Soliloquy:
“I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.”
I’d never say that turning your back on your suffering and absconding all the pain is the right way to handle it. But, don’t let the crisis destroy the most brilliant aspects of life. We need to give ourselves a chance, to move ahead, to dream, to immerse the splendor of existence and to become better individuals.
Traveling has all the power to heal your wounds because when you’re out there, you understand emotions, love, pain and strength in a better way.
Audrey Niffenegger put this rightly in Her Fearful Symmetry
“There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.”
So, it’s okay if you’re lost; believe me, you’ll find your way as you live through the world.
