I've been thinking about this concept for months; why we have the urge to travel. And why some of us act on it while others don't. So initially when I started writing this piece, I experienced hardcore word-vomit. Just page after page came pouring out. So I'm editing it down and splitting it up into multiple parts. Now, I'll just dive in to what would have been more-or-less the intro to my essay-like clusterfuck of thoughts.
Wanderlust is kind of a romanticized word for curiosity. Its a phenomenon we've probably experienced since the beginning of time. The fact that governments back in the day invested so much in explorers to go out and discover "new lands" shows that, as a species, we've always been curious travelers. Admittedly, for the conquistadors finding new "worlds" was mainly about exploiting land for gold, natural resources, and then ultimately colonizing it. As modern day wanderlust-ers, we're not necessarily hopping on planes to go colonize the Tuscan countrysides of Italy.
But when we travel, we are searching for some kind of treasure....But what exactly? What rare commodity exists in the beaches of Thailand and the cliffs of Ireland at the same time? What is it that Americans can find in Europe, and Europeans can find in America, but neither can find in their homeland?
There's a certain indescribable but undeniable high that you get from being in a place you've never been before, experiencing a different culture, being surrounded by people who speak a foreign language, eating foods you've never tasted before...just new experiences in general. You get that high from standing right in front of the pyramids after years of seeing them on postcards. You get that high when you discover a surreal connection you feel with history when staring at a graffiti piece on the Berlin wall. Or the strange intimacy you experience with the beaches of Ibiza even though you had originally went there to party at the most famous nightclub scene. Or sitting in an outdoor cafe in Valencia, and not being in a rush to get back home or back to work or back to doing anything - just actually sitting there and enjoying your cafe con leche with your friends and having a pleasant conversation while basking in the sunlight....
Travel allows us to abandon the never-ending to-do lists, the constant over-time, the fear-driven cut-throat ambition in trying to win the rat race...traveling (if you do it right) puts all of that on pause. And for the first time in what seems like forever, you take a breath, and just experience the exact fucking glorious moment of being alive and witnessing something beautiful or feeling at peace. THAT is why we crave it. To me, that's the definition of wanderlust.
