I always think of “big, expensive trips” when I hear the word “travel”.
Why?
Do I need to throw myself inside a flying metal toothpaste, breathe in the farts of 415 other passengers for 12 hours, and bore myself to death in layover purgatory… All to overpay as a tourist?
Probably not.
Travel is amazing. It reveals the contours and richness of the world beyond my day-to-day experience. It shows me how limited and narrow my worldview is.
But there’s more.
The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said that travel is for fools:
“Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness.
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I don’t agree with Emerson, but he has a point. I fantasize about how travel will change my life. Will it? Yes, but not in some mind-shattering Disney moment.
Travel doesn’t need to be extravagant. I long for epic adventures, yet I can have these same adventures close by. I think of what I dream of versus what I actually experience. I crave magical experiences. In reality, I spend most of my travels on a plane, a bus, a car… I sleep, I eat, I look for washrooms, I walk around, I meet new people. I buy stuff. I come home.
Sure, I have great pictures for Instagram, but my dreams always outshine reality — and that’s not a bad thing. It just means that I have to be honest.
Beauty lies in simplicity.
“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
— Paulo Coelho
I’ve lived in large cities my whole life. Hong Kong, Jakarta, Taipei, Beijing, and now Toronto. I always imagined that travel only counted if it involved crossing an international border.
In my mind, I work for the whole year just to make a big getaway. I’d put my head down and work, I’d stay locked up in the city until my brief respite. Poof. Two weeks of bliss, and then I’m back at the grind, working toward my next escape.
Rinse and repeat.
I realize that this is a terrible way to live. Why do I work so hard just to run away from my “real” life? Two weeks is about 3.85% of the year. So does that mean I’m spending 96.15% of my working life toiling away for such a small payoff? That doesn’t make sense.
Luckily, I’ve got weekends. I’ve got evenings. I don’t work 24 hours a day.
Every weekend and every night is an opportunity. A chance for adventure. A chance to explore more. To live more.
A few weeks ago, my friends brought me on a quick road trip Niagara-on-the-Lake, about two hours away from Toronto. Even though I’ve lived in Toronto for 7 years, I’d never been there.
It was a place full of trees, sunshine and small joys. I sat by Lake Ontario, munching down a home-packed Za’atar Manakish and gulping Orangina. In the distance, I saw Fort Niagara, the oldest continuously occupied military site in North America. A quick swim away from my picnic spot was the United States. The fort looked like my memories of Cartagena and Havana.
I was shocked.
I recalled sitting on Cartagena’s majestic walls and staring at Havana’s Castillo De Los Tres Reyes Del Morro.
Here I was, a car ride from home in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I was still in Canada, and I was experiencing a similar feeling of awe.
There must be some mistake. I didn’t pay for crazy air-fares, so is this really travel? Does this count as travel if there are no tourist traps, no gullible travellers and no language barriers?
I felt sheepish. People travelled from all around the world to see what was right in my backyard.
From my perspective, Niagara-on-the-Lake was just a part of the neighbourhood. From someone else’s point of view, my “boring old Canada” was an exotic destination thousands of kilometres from home.
I’m blessed, yet I’m always searching for somewhere else, never appreciating what I have in front of me.
The trees swayed their Autumn dance. It was an uncharacteristically hot day, and the sky shone blue. I walked about, appreciating the joy of my fellow wanderers and the novelty of breathing in a new place.
Step by step.
I don’t need to live life all-or-nothing. I can enjoy the moments. I can enjoy these brief interludes that are part of the journey. Life is a process, and though it isn’t easy, there is beauty in the struggle. There is joy in the mundane.
Happiness is birthed in challenges, as opportunity stems from difficulty.
“Stop leaving and you will arrive.
Stop searching and you will see.
Stop running away and you will be found.”
— Lao Zi
