Two little children, as tall as Great Dane’s gulp their two percent milk in unison, getting ready to set out into the real world. Curious little people, wanting to discover the area around them, although their pureness and lack of knowledge leave them vulnerable to everything. Here humans appear in their purest form. Where no harm, nor broken hearts, or any corrupt ways have sunken into their skins like a scar. To be so innocent and untouched is something one can never get back --even if they could turn back time.
As you set out into the world for their lifelong journey accompanied by many smaller trips, both traumatic and blissful events come together to help you grow. A car ride to the store for the first time is only the very beginning of many. A trip in the tall sturdy grey cart as your parents put various items into the big vacant area in the rolling cart. As you grow, so does your knowledge of the world, where small trips that were once classified as visits to the grocery store become weekend getaways in the town over.
There’s always something to learn from every “trip”. Sometimes easily learned, but not most of the time. Through lessons, we learn, we grow, we experience new emotions. The first loss in a game after a winning streak brings despair. Finally making it down a ski hill successfully without falling gives a feeling of achievement. Through these various emotions, we experience different lessons that help us grow into the people we are today. In the present, these learnings help us choose what we want to do in the future, where we want to travel, who we want to become. It all starts with the beginning lessons of our life, our very first trips out.
Half the journey in life is the travel time, the time between point a and b. The endless hours in the car are where half the memories from any trip are created. From taking selfies with sleeping victims to the deepest talks of your life, time in travel always flies by fast. Travel time can be rather short and rather long, or even similar in time, but never the exact same. Since every single adventure in life is unique, even if only by a touch.
It always starts off perfectly normal, like any other road trip, a truck loaded with food and endless entertainment to keep boredom miles away. Slowly the food diminishes, the electronics die and it’s back to square one. A pit stop is made to replenish supplies, another pile of junk food sits next to you, another empty plastic bag waiting to be filled with trash. But the entertainment is gone, finito, done. The struggle for a boredom killer awaits. Until the words you’d never want to hear in the middle of your car ride are said.
“I spy with my little eye…..hmmm, something white.”
“Is it the line in the middle of the road…”
“Hey! How’d you know?”
Typically after numerous hours of driving, even just sitting on your butt. You’re tired out of your mind and ready to pass out. Thankful the million hour ride is over and there’s enough room to stretch out your limbs. But the memories created in the car, truck, tour bus will be forever. The hours on end spent singing old classics, Queens, Bohemian Rhapsody, and The Beatles Here Comes the Sun. Free of vehicles until the dreaded day comes, the ride back home. You’ve spent more than enough time running away from your familiar yet monogamous and grey life, and now it’s time to face reality once again.
There are days where you’ll want to be alone. Alone to think, alone to breathe. To process everything that is going on around you. So we travel alone, to learn more about ourselves and the environment around us. Being surrounded by others can be fun, but there’s always the alternative, not fun. While being around others as well as in relationships is beneficial for our health, the downside of relationships and the company of others isn’t. Which is why taking a break from people is never a bad thing. To be less dependent on others and able to live independently is never a bad thing. Which is where independence comes in. Where we learn to be comfortable with ourselves before becoming comfortable with others around us.
We travel solo to learn about ourselves and expand our knowledge of the world. We are then able to go whenever wherever it is desired to be at a given moment. Able to be sporadic without needing to discuss with anyone, an ability to be a free spirit. To experience what it is like to live in the moment. To find oneself and ground oneself at a time of struggle when none of that is known.
Travelling alone may be quiet, but it gives you time to think. To reflect and plan for the future. It gives you the freedom to take time to sit in cafes and try foreign baked goods, savoury pastries and roasted coffee. As you sip your hot coffee, you take a moment to take in your surroundings. What’s similar to home, and what’s different. The warmth that emits from the cafe engulfs you giving you a home away from home. The familiar coffee scent fills your nostrils and lets you sigh in relief as you go to take a bite of a pastry you’ve never seen before. A light and airy texture enters your mouth and you take a moment to let it disintegrate, astounded by how delicious the mysterious pastry was you stand up to order another one. These little moments in solo travelling are what many people live for.
We as humans attract each other, if given the choice we would choose a crowd over isolation. Thus why most people don’t spend their birthdays alone, instead people travel far and wide to spend it with loved ones. Whether it be for a couple of days or even a couple of hours, as long as we aren’t alone we’ll be okay with it. You will travel to places you wouldn’t go on your own time, places you may even dislike, but you will go because your loved ones are there and it is important for you to be there.
Loving people makes you do bizarre things that you never imagine yourself doing until it happens. You’ll start attending your six-year-old cousin's birthday parties just because she personally asked you to attend. You’ll listen to screaming children for three hours because your little cousin's face lit up when you showed up on her special day. You follow her around when she drags you places, giving a quick tour around the play area. As she does her best to get you to hide with her from the other kids so you may eat your popcorn in peace.
During cake time you stand with the adults, your phone competing with the other parents to get the best picture. Like the proud cousin you are, you somehow find your way to the middle and your camera takes the best photo that's ever existed. Your beaming cousin sits behind a cake bigger than her face and calls for you to sit next to her because she’s scared of the flame from the candles. You smile at your cousin, give her a thumbs up and with confidence tell her she can do it herself. And the proud energy that emits from your body as she proceeds to blow the candle out herself would have people thinking you were sisters, but I mean you were close enough to be.
At the end of the day, it’s about the experience. The thrill of the plane ride to a new place never explored before. New smells of bakery items never tried and the warmth of freshly baked bread. Monuments left and right, spectacular world architectures are seen in person. Towering buildings that have taken eons to build take your breath away. Century-year-old monuments, on the verge of falling apart, stay open for visitors from across the world to experience. Famous amusement parks, old and new, are always full to the brim of screams from people of all ages, from all over the world. Coming together to experience the newest rides looking for the latest thrill, for that skip of a heartbeat.
People travel, to places both new and old, to experience for the first time or the millionth time. To live or recreate memories that will last more than a lifetime. The photos taken on these little getaways will always feel like a lifetime away once you get settled back into the life that you left on pause. The stories each photo told will always exist, even if the memories of the trip fade, just a bit. The sincerity of laughter in one photo gives off a feeling of nostalgia, while the sadness of a fallen ice cream on the ground emits a feeling of sorrow.
These memories of nostalgia, happiness and sorrow which now only play out in our memories and photos we somehow managed to keep, leave us reminiscing in blissful happiness. Experiences that wouldn’t have felt the same if they were experienced at home. Wanting to be back, across the world, even if just for a moment to experience all the unpredictable events unfold again, just once more. To travel just once more, to experience it all over again, just once more.