Some days I wake up and go to work and don’t return from work until it’s time to go to sleep again. Some days I just watch TV and do laundry and buy a new toothbrush from the shop. Some days I spend just sipping on beers down by the lake with friends, and some days I don’t even do that much.
I finally priced my flight home and because I’ve started thinking about leaving, I’ve started thinking about why I came at all. What have I achieved? Why do we travel? And sure I’ve done the other side, the solo hikes amongst the amazing scenery, the american road trip, backpacking alone through Australia but the majority of my time away has been scarily similar to my life at home.
I believed before I came that fulfilment would hit me like a steam train. That one day I would just wake up and feel satisfied and whole and that all the questions would be answered. That it would just click one day. But the reality is our lives are so often made in the ordinary. We are so often defined by the most mundane of moments. Travel does change you. And so does staying at home. We change constantly, we grow in every context of our lives.
I didn’t find myself in America or Australia or at the top of some New Zealand mountain top like I thought I would. I didn’t find myself in hostel life or when I was making new friends. I didn’t even find myself in Asia and that shit was real. You see we are not the people who post skydiving pictures on Facebook and pictures of us riding elephants and holding koala bears. The person you really are is made in the most insignificant moments. When we choose not to use all the milk because we know somebody else might want tea. When we find a way to surprise people who know us better than ourselves. When we do something simply because it makes us feel alive and not because it makes us feel popular.
If you truly want to find yourself then you need only look at your everyday life. By the people you choose to surround yourself with. By the way you choose to treat the people who would still stay, and how you allow yourself to be treated.
Your true self is not buried in some far away land or crazy adventure, it is right there under your nose, in your home town, living your life.
This is breathing 