After the first few days of self care, sweatpants, junk food + sad/love movie reruns, you reach a point (much like myself) of a need for renewal. A page refresh on who you are and a process of self-discovery in this scary single world you’re now back in. So, travel. “Eat, Pray, Love” or in the case of a young 20-something backpacking, Eat, Pay, Drugs. The need to travel is something intrinsic to us as people that nomadic call to just move. Much like water, the longer we remain still, the more we become stagnant.

Motion, movement, exploration of the unmapped and the yet to be experienced. Be it locally or internationally, afar or close to home. Yes, there is an amount of privilege to where one travels, but the process of leaving your comfort zone is one we all need in our lives, it doesn’t matter where or how we do it. It requires determination and a boldness of will that sometimes just needs that kick of a breakup or loss. By bus or by flight, boat or by train, or simply just walking; the freedom of casting away all familiarity is both frightening and exhilarating.

I went as far as I could. To discover myself or as much as self-discovery. Away from all I knew and the comfort zones that had become toxic to the other side of the map, over oceans and man-made wonders, through forests and by rivers, all the way till I reached the tallest mountains in the world. I couldn’t tell you what I was looking for exactly, I didn’t really know that myself, but they say that life is in the journey, not the destination and so, I attempted to see and experience all that I could and be all I could for all that I could be. Discovering that the route we take through the valleys and crests is more important than the place we end, because (hopefully) our journey usually ends back at the place we call home. If that is the case then the journey really is about the time from the start to the end. All those beautiful bits in between.

Still, experiencing and going as far as I could, I could find no anchor. The real world, made even more visceral and alive in the bustling marketplaces of Delhi, or the chaotic streets of Hanoi, still somehow felt intangible to me. I felt more and more as a traveller as I increasingly began to realize my connections to this world are just momentary things, fleeting chances at a life well spent or time ill-used. Momentous but minuscule. Magnificent but momentary. The bridge between self and the world is just an illusion and that ID and superego are but factions of differing narratives. As I part that veil I lose myself more and more until I stare at reflections in dimly lit hostel bathrooms of eyes I don’t recognize any longer. Growth, discovery, change. To get lost on a Rumspringa is to be tried in the forge. Now I wasn’t on the same sort of quest of spiritual affirmation as a Mormon would be, but I was yet also bereft of the previously assured sanctity of normalcy before the fires of a wider, faster, secular world reshaped my mettle. As I tried to become one with all that was around me, I ended becoming but just one small part of the pieces that form the whole. I felt those pieces as I explored new places, the sound of kids laughter from as I walked through the town of Lumbini, triggering half-forgotten memories of days spent playing on the streets or seeing my grandmothers favourite flowers as the voices of my family or the tears of my exes morph me into a being that’s made up of fragments that war with one another for peace. Who am I? The primordial question. After some introspection and much posturing I imagine that somehow we got the question wrong. It’s not “who am I”: but rather “what am I?”

An easy answer would be that we are complex human beings on a planet that reflects the complexities of our nature. We are both as proud as these mountains that stand tall and as polluted as our oceans that slowly die. We are reflected by all that we interact with, for in those interactions we are defined more and more – we limit ourselves by thinking of our interactions in a certain way but in fact every action we make in this world defines us. So what am I? My generation was told we could be whatever we wanted to be, we were encouraged to think big and by the society around us we were influenced to think of ego to see our personal success as a motive for our lives. We wanted to be rich, powerful and famous. Movie stars or sports heroes, the skies were the limit. For what could be the first time in global history, we reach a social point where options are seemingly abundant. Even in light of that; economic stability continues being the main precursor for many – understandably. But if the pursuit for financial security overtakes the development of who we fundamentally are and the growth of our souls and our spirits, no amount of money will fill the deep hole that grows increasingly wider the more we leave it in the dark.

We have been asking ourselves for thousands of years: what is the meaning of life? Is it money? Family? Spiritual piety? I’ve asked myself that for the brief flash that has been my entire existence, yet I’m no closer to an answer. If the answer is to be happy, then why is the necessary for sadness so important in balance? If the answer is acceptance of duality and peace within oneself, then why is our greatest enemy our ego? For surely that has been our serpent in the garden of Eden, the sliver of thought that influences us away from paradise. It’s the voice that bolsters pride to fanaticism, love to hate, the same voice that whispers our discontent at the world in front of us. So how do we divorce it? As generations that have ever increasing options that only our grandparents would imagine in their wildest dreams, we have ever increasing choice. And choice is hard. For what would be the right choice? What would be the “right” path in a world that potentially offers you all that you could set your mind to?

For all of the questions I have posed, I wish I could tell you something definitive and final. Would that it be so easy and would that we actually listened to the supposed answers to life rather than the inescapable need to seek them out ourselves. And that is my point; the pursuit and the journey. By putting aside the expectation of achieving the answer and rather to explore with the eyes of discovery – knowing that the more you experience, the more we connect what we know with the unknowable. Answers are found in the spaces between, in exquisite epiphanies as we stare out the window of a mini-bus taxi driving through the plains of Limpopo, or the enlightening exultation of life watching the sunrise on an unfamiliar landscape, the light bleeding on mountains both new to you and yet so old in time.. 

We were born to explore and rediscover our relationship to the source of life. If you feel the immeasurable swell of discontent, a sense of un-knowing or a longing for discovery, I urge you to pack your bag and find yourself on the road. Be it for a few days, a few weeks, months or even years; by yourself, with your friends or with family, do it. Sleep in an uncomfortable hostel, be squashed in a bus, run around a train station ducking scams and laughing at the chaos that comes. 

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