For the past ten years I’ve been looking for ways to satisfy my urge to travel. I’ve never really cared about travelling for vacation or shorter trips – I’ve done it but it has never really fulfilled me as much as actually being on the road, for months. However, not everybody can afford leaving their job and travel for months, right? Not everybody has the money to do it either. Not everybody is young or strong enough to do it. And, of course, as a woman you risk too much if you do it, right?
Well, I don’t agree. I’ve never really been convinced by people who suggest that something is impossible or a bad choice simply because they can’t imagine themselves doing it; or it would be too hard for them to handle that it actually IS possible, but that they are too scared to do it. Interestingly, I’ve been surrounded with such people for most of my life.
My parents, for example, don’t give any value to travelling (for which reason they would never spend money on it) and the same goes for most of the people I grew up with. Of course, I don’t blame them because it’s their choice. What I’m trying to point out, instead, is that it wasn’t easy to grow up surrounded with such mindset and eventually get rid of its armour and breathe on my own – get out of there and do my thing.
I still remember sitting in the class at the university and watching a large map of South America on the wall. I started reading to myself the names of the places on it and it felt like I was supposed to be there but I had no clue how that could ever happen. However, a year later all the circumstances alined and I was on my first longer travel, from Colombia all the way to the south of Argentina, just the way I envisaged that day while staring at the map.
After that I knew there was no way back. I felt the excitement of discovering the unknown, the thrill of having all the possibilities open, the liberating surrender to the uncertainties of tomorrow. That was my thing and I didn’t want to give up on that.
But then I came back and I noticed that, while I was much more determined in persuing new adventures than ever before, not much had changed in my absence. The priorities of those around me remained the same and the society followed the same flow as before – that of steady work, more or less stable long-term relationships, and never-ending saving for the worst days (that eventually never come because somehow things never seem bad enough to invest in them).
Eventually, in such circumstances, my initial enthusiasm of living my life as free as possible, just being carried in the wind to wherever I was supposed to be, became intertwined with the majority’s fear. Fear of not securing a future, a home, a family of my own, a pension (this, of course, being the factor that seems to provoke most terror of all). I’ve already tried to explain where this fear comes from in another post.
So, I looked for a solution that would enable me not to make a choice or a sacrifice, but instead to have it all. Since I’ve always been preoccupied with how quickly time flies (something I got as a kid while listening to elder people constantly complaining that time passes so quickly and that I should enjoy childhood while I could), working hard and saving money for five to ten years so I could finally travel was out of the question. The other option was to look for jobs in different countries and in that way travel and gain money at the same time.
So, I chose the second one and I did it for two years. Sounds like a dream but, honestly, it was rather a disappointment. I got so frustrated with the fact that I didn’t have the freedom I once experienced. I learned I couldn’t handle the routine imposed to me by others.
Life is everything that unfolds in every moment – not something going on in between the brackets. During vacation or a gap year. I wasn’t willing to take ”time off” to live my life. You either live it or not. So I quit it all because for me travelling wasn’t something happening inside the brackets – it was everything outside of them.
I understand now that the solution to this puzzle of satisfying my deepest urge to move and, at the same time, to secure stable income wasn’t possible without actually making a choice, a sacrifice. And I understand now that only in this way did I really get it all.
My sacrifice didn’t consist in changing any of my external conditions, although I also did that. It consisted in getting completely rid of that suffocating and limiting armour of fear that I inherited from my parents, friends and great majority of people in general, not only in Croatia but everywhere I had been. I got so tired of its weight and I simply wanted to be, even if the price, paradoxically, were my life.
I still remember the day I took it off. That day, after quitting my last ”normal” job, I felt I reached the end in terms of living according to the system’s rules. I cried a lot, sobbing without stopping for hours because I felt betrayed, disappointed, used, cheated. I gave my best to be happy, but that wasn’t happening – the system wasn’t giving me anything in return.
I reached the end of the road and had no clue what to do next because the world didn’t offer any straightforward exit for those who chose to simply be themselves. That night I dreamt of ending my life and, as my consciousness was slowly fading away, I opened my eyes, as if to a new life, with an all-encompassing stillness, relief and a renewed sense of freedom.
I knew then, again, that there was no way back. Nothing would be the same from now on, I firmly decided. I would do my thing and if I ended up alone, abandoned, poor and sick, without nobody to look after me, so be it.
I did then my three-month trekking trip around Azores islands in the middle of the Atlantic, which reconnected me again with where we all belong – nature.
Soon after that a six-month travel around Southeast Asia followed, which helped me assimilate new decisions and changes.
Currently, I’m taking a rest in Azores (gallery). I know that when the right moment comes a new destination will reaveal itself to me, just like every time so far, and I’ll respond to my nomadic spirit once again :).
Opportunities to gain money also come on their own, just the way it’s supposed to be, when I precisely need it (and when I actually can dedicate my time to earning it). I’m often reminding myself of the numerous occasions this has happened so far so that I don’t lose track and get misguided (scared) again. The journey thus continues.
Why am I writing all this? I want you to know that being constantly on the move is my choice and I’ve struggled a lot to reach the point where I can finally live it. And it’s possible.
I want you to understand that I haven’t chosen the easier way out of life’s responsibilities or that I’m escaping from them – it’s quite the opposite. I’m engaged with life’s resposibilities much more than you can imagine because my life path isn’t an already well-beaten track (although I’m quite certain that eventually it will be).
I want you to challenge the conviction that people who are on the constant move, like myself, are somewhere deep down looking for a home, a partner, a vocation or a purpose. It could be so but I quitted on all that the day I took the armour off. Because, ever since that first solo-adventure in South America, I always knew where I belonged. I knew who I was. I knew what my thing was. Just the hard part was to accept it and finally live it because it’s not what the majority chooses to do, to be, to persue, to live.
Do you really believe that we belong only to one place? That without staying in or ”finding” this concrete place, with a precise name and location, we are doomed to loneliness and abandonment? I don’t, beacause my experience has shown me otherwise. It hasn’t been always easy, but nothing in life is always easy.
“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place!”
Maya Angelou, American poet
Why is all this so imporant to me? Well, because it’s true. It’s not some hippie talk or a phase I’m going through. Everything before this point of freedom were phases and escapes that eventually led my way (back) to what I sensed a long time ago as my authentic path.
The phases of struggle and fight against what I am so I could fit in the system, secure living, fulfil other people’s expectations and gain their approval. The phases of never-ending seeking and wanting, and always ending up in the same place.
All that was necessary, but now I abandoned seeking because what I once found by seeking in the end only misguided me. That’s why I choose to surrender myself to unexpected opportunities and simply attending to my life impulses, rather than frenetically seeking determined places, people and things.
I decide to take only what’s given to me, trusting firmly that it will always be just what I need. If that means not having a fixed address for the rest of my life, no job, property, boyfriend, pension, family or friends (all those things we erroneously believe we couldn’t live without), I accept it.
