I look back at my countless voyages to unknown places and I don't see happiness and joy in every moment. I mostly see hardships and complications and mistakes. Yet, I still yearn to travel far and wide, seeking those same feelings. It makes no sense at first sight, but reading more into it, you can see that traveling isn't about the glorious moments shown in pictures. It's about the moments of uncertainty when I struggled with who I was and who I wanted to be.
Whenever I come back from a trip, I see changes in myself and the perceptions of "home" become more perplexing to me. I begin to see the people around me in a new light, and I challenge the things I once counted as unwavering truth. Traveling doesn't necessarily answer the questions I am faced with at the beginning of a journey. However, it allows me to expand the search for answers in a new, uncomfortable environment.
Traveling, simply put, makes you vulnerable. It embarrasses you. It can even, at times, be painful. But it's in those uneasy moments that this new formed identity you can now hold begins to emerge. Instead of having the same routine every day of going to work, and then to lunch, and then back to work, and then to dinner, and then to the newest series on Netflix, and then to bed, you have a disruption of normal which then causes you to question what "normal" really is, and if the version of "normal" you are living is the normal you really want.
To travel is to see what was once hidden. You are forced into making new friendships with people that have otherwise not existed in your life. It causes you to explore new places as a means of adjustment. And, it allows you to struggle so much with who you currently are and where your path is headed.
When people ask me how my travels were, I want to tell them how terrible it was at times--not because I was miserable, but because I had to really challenge myself in uncomfortable ways. And then, when they say, "Well, it looks like traveling really isn't for you," then I can say, "Actually, traveling is much more than the frilly moments and the bucket list achievements. It's embracing the difficult times because those are the ones that change you."
