“To Travel is to Live”

I’m a part-time modern nomad and travel is my therapy. It feeds my soul and keeps me sane. It’s the only way to satisfy a deep itch, and each adventure provides only temporary relief.

Throughout history people have traveled. They followed life-sustaining game herds and water sources, voyaged seas in search of peaceful lands, and crossed deserts seeking fertile ground. In time, the need to travel for survival dissipated, or the lifestyle was tragically hindered due to settled agriculture, government policies, climate change, and/or social and economic pressures.

The need or ability to live a nomadic lifestyle may be diminished, but for many of us a deep desire to adventure, to live each day with purpose, and escape the “same sh*t, different day” phenomenon, has a powerful hold on us.

Why does this need to move stir in some of us stronger than others? Is it because our ancestors were part of nomadic cultures? Perhaps it’s the wanderlust gene? For me, traveling isn’t a vacation or a time to relax and recharge from my regular life. It IS my regular life-when I’m not traveling, I’m dreaming, planning, or writing about traveling. Sure, I spend plenty of time relaxing by pools, but I’m most content wandering a pedestrian street in an unfamiliar city, half lost and marveling how I ever got around before Google maps.

Traveling requires mindfulness, the kind I find impossible to practice when I’m at home facing the endless list of chores. If forces me to focus on the task at hand and limits wandering thoughts that lead to unproductive anxiety.

To me, travel is:

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,

To gain all while you give,

To roam the roads of lands remote,

To travel is to live.”

Hans Christian Andersen