For most of my life, I’d traveled sparingly. When I did take the seldom step out of my hometown and ventured to any foreign land, it was with my family or people I knew. There was always a vestige of home shadowing over me, infiltrating my independent thoughts and shaping my mindset. And I wasn’t really aware of the poison influence of these roots. It felt like security, and security is a plus, isn’t it? Such logic connects so seamlessly that it passes through your mind unconsciously, slipping through like a silent thief. You become close-minded without really being a close-minded person. You don’t question the status quo.
It was for this reason that the word wanderlust had no definition to me for so long. And—I didn’t know it—but I wasn’t really free. Wanderlust. Three syllables, rolls easily off the tongue. It’s a pretty word, paints portraits in the head of stars and fields and skies. And you want to have it, the way you want to have anything new. But you don’ really feel it, do you?
Last summer, wanderlust, after for so long being a one-dimensional, textbook concept that I’d memorized and adored, engulfed me entirely. I took a trip alone to a big city, Washington D.C., without family or friends for a psychology and neuroscience camp at American University.
For maybe the first time in my life, as I wandered off into the vast airport, I grasped the idea that I was totally alone. There is this primitive ball of fear scrunched within each of us; it prevents us from moving forwards, begs us to blink our eyes shut and knit them as deeply as possible into our skulls. But sometimes you take a sip of courage and you press on forwards because you have no other choice or because it’s the only way you’ll ever grow. And that is what I did.
It was almost one, and I hadn’t eaten lunch, so I bought a savory pretzel from Auntie Anne’s without having to ask my parents if I could or my friends if they were OK with my choice of food. Then, one of the many college students who were helping to lead the camp texted me, telling me where to rendezvous, and all by myself I followed the signs and arrows, lugging my suitcase out from behind me, until I found them.
A couple of other high school students were already lounging around, waiting for the bus to come. None of us knew each other. But it was amazing to me how quickly we are to talk to others when ancient social shackles fall away, when everyone around you is a stranger but fair game to become your best friend, when any implanted bias from whispers of rumors about people holding you back disappears. Even I, an unbearably shy person, found myself participating in conversation and, more shockingly, liking everyone around me for how good people they seemed to be (when I usually feel like I hate everybody).
The buses were late, so we were allowed to go explore the airport; I went with a group of three other girls. We made ourselves comfortably lost, discovering overpriced bookstores and enticing restaurants and marble walkways. We talked about where we came from and what schools we went to and what our lives were like—and I saw stories fuse together, saw red meet blue meet purple meet yellow, as I realized how different hometowns in the same country could be (we have high schools with multiple campuses here?). The airport had a miniature museum at the top about some of its famed airplanes, and I remember looking out of the window from there and seeing the enormity of the landscape before me. I was nervous and shaking and alone, but so excited. I wanted it all.
When we came back and rode off on the buses, I gaped at whatever scenery rushed at us outside the massive windows. Again we chatted and I learned about worlds outside my own, and through these conversations I visited Chicago and California and the Midwest. One girl marveled at trees because she had hardly seen a tree in her life. When we reached the city, I marveled at the restaurants of every ethnicity and region.
The kids I had met on the bus were of different camp divisions, government or medicine or engineering or wherever. They were directed to their respective areas and I was directed to mine. I didn’t really see them or talk to them again. But I think it’s just so important to be kind to people, even if it’s just for the one moment before your lives diverge forevermore. Kindness envelops you, like rays of sunshine, and brings about such profound happiness.
I spent the next ten days with the kids from psychology/neuroscience. I had a really nice roommate who was very pretty and popular, and even though we weren’t close out of those at camp, she was the type of person I never would have spoken to otherwise and who I would have mentally stereotyped and denounced.
In just those ten days, I realized how truly great people can be, how students plucked from various areas of the United States and even internationally may all have different heartbeats but one that follow the same rhythm. One friend I met was the loud, comedic type, who radiated confidence in her every inch, who proudly went around introducing herself to everyone in sight. At school, at Johns Creek, I would have judged her. But then I talked to her, got to know her a little bit better, and I realized—she was a great person not only for her self-assurance and humor but also from the compassion in her heart and how she wanted the best for you. And, I realized, she had her vulnerabilities too, which I learned about from her, and sometimes she just wanted to be alone.
There were so, so, so many other great people, as well. Musicians, artists, those who went to all-girls boarding schools in New York but lived in California, those who went to military schools, those who lived in Georgia like me. Through visits to landmarks and museums and institutions, at meals or at lessons or at rallies, the passions in our chests flowered, the doubt in our minds disintegrated, the beauty of the world brightened (and the money in our wallets disappeared). I saw how genuinely nice, how hilariously goofy, how courageously open, how unabashedly caring everyone was. And so unexpectedly. And it was all so beautiful—it made me aspire to be a better person.
There was such an intellectual atmosphere whatever we did . Whether it be copying notes at lessons, investigating in the lab room or strolling through the museums, the deluge of knowledge made me want more. Even the tourists on streets fascinated me, as they strolled by speaking rapid-fire foreign languages that I don’t know a word in, taking photographs of themselves with selfie-sticks or professional tripod cameras. I wanted to know everyone’s story. It changed me so much.
When I came home, all I wanted to do was to do something. I wanted to paint everything I’d felt and learned into a million canvases, sing it into melodies and choruses, ink it into my unassuming poetry. Most of all, I wanted to travel again. For the first time, the vast enormity of wanderlust swept me away like a particle against an oncoming tide. I didn’t want it anymore just because I wanted change or fun—I needed it like a pump for my blood. I wanted to meet people, to visit places, to do things, that inspire me. I needed to do something, anything, in order to not dissolve back into the rigid state of mind so common of high school students, fixated on grades and gossip. And, at the very least, I needed hope of the possibility that someday I could fly away again, find color again.
Home, as pleasant as it can be, can becoming tiring, with the same pinprick faces and everyday emotions all fading eventually to murky splotches. Your heart threatens to burst from your rib cage as the distant lands chant your name but you cannot do anything. What traveling does is sharpen all the color that blurred and satiate the inextinguishable wanderlust yearning in your gut. You learn of the depth behind people and experience emotions so acute and varied that they can only be felt first-hand in order to appreciate their true intensity. You become so much more open-minded. This summer, and for the rest of your life, I encourage everyone to travel as much as they are able to, to meet new people, and to learn about the world all over again.
