“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” From the heart of a wanderer to the soul of a dreamer, this truth resonates with all those in a relentless pursuit of something elusive—discovered not in a fixed place, but in the transformative art of becoming.
A wanderer’s heart isn’t born, but rather forged. Just as the human mind isn’t fully formed at birth, it takes shape through experiences. Yet, I believe some are born with a deeper yearning; a pull toward the unknown not felt by others. And so, she was born with a heart full of what some call “wanderlust”, though she didn’t know it at the time. As a child, she was simply a girl with chocolate-brown hair and pine-green eyes, gazing at a sky that always seemed too vast for the small world she was raised in.
Her first love was the stars—distant, flickering lights that whispered ancient secrets across the vast expanse of night. They were not mere comforts; they anchored her, serving as steadfast reminders that no matter where she stood, no matter the day or place, the stars would always return to the heavens. From thousands of miles away, they burned with a constancy that embodied the paradox of a world in perpetual flux. In their luminous glow, she felt the gravitational pull of the universe, an invitation to explore the infinite mysteries that lay beyond her small existence. In their presence, she sensed both the weight of the unknown and the intoxicating freedom that came with the realization that it was hers to discover.
Her parents, like most, tried to keep her grounded, to shelter her within the familiar warmth and safety of a home. But for her, home was never defined by walls or stillness. Home was motion—the blur of fields through the window of a speeding car, the soft hum of an airplane as it carved through the clouds, the steady rhythm of a train carrying her toward something foreign. She understood early on that life was too quick to be lived in one place for too long. To stay still was, for her, to watch the world slip through her fingers, vanishing before she had a chance to ever really grasp it.
As she grew older, the relentless march of time only deepened her sense of urgency. Adolescence unfurled before her, revealing the bittersweet truth that nothing in life was permanent. Pain, heartbreak, and the shadows of uncertainty became her constant companions, lurking just beyond the horizon, no matter where she wandered. In those quiet moments, when the world hushed around her, her heart ached with a strange longing, an insistent pull that remained nameless and elusive. While her friends seemed content to tread the paths laid out before them—school, love, careers—she often felt as if she were in a waiting room, poised for something she couldn’t quite define, something just out of reach.
With this, she carried a loneliness that felt as natural as breathing. It wasn’t a loneliness born out of isolation or heartbreak, but a deeper, quieter companion—ever-present, a reminder that life often defies understanding. She came to realize that this solitude wasn’t hers alone; it wove through the fabric of every life, stitched into the hearts of all who walked the earth, even if they never spoke of it. Perhaps that was why she was irresistibly drawn to the idea of traveling, to stepping into the unknown. It wasn’t merely a longing to explore new landscapes; it was a quest to find herself amidst the unfamiliar, to unearth fragments of her identity hidden in the world’s corners. In the act of exploration, she believed, lay the possibility of making sense of her loneliness—a hope that wandering the corners of the earth might somehow mend what felt broken within.
She embarked on her first solo journey at nineteen, settling into the plane—a metal vessel that felt both foreign and exhilarating. As it ascended, a weightlessness enveloped her, lifting her not only off the ground but also away from the expectations and roles she had worn like a second skin for so long. In that moment, she understood what so many sought out their entire lives: freedom. A quiet thrill surged within her as she embraced the uncertainty of where this road might lead, reveling in the anonymity of a new city where no one knew her name. For the first time, she tasted true liberation—there were no anchors, no safety nets, only the vast expanse of possibility stretching out before her.
With each taste of adventure, she craved the entire feast. The world exploded before her like an unwritten story, and for the first time, she grasped the pen, now poised to craft her narrative. For the first time, she was the author. She was in control. Society’s roles and expectations faded into the background, for she pursued every dream with fearless abandon. She roamed sun-drenched streets and fog-cloaked mountains, navigated bustling markets and wandered through desolate deserts, discovering fragments of herself within each new landscape.
And so she fell in love—not with people, but with places, captivated by the sensation of standing on the precipice of something vast and unknown. To many, it seemed she cherished travel more than love, perhaps because she hadn’t yet encountered the right person. Or maybe it was simply that when faced with the choice between love and freedom, she would always choose the boundless embrace of freedom.
She wrote fervently and photographed everything around her, striving to grasp the elusive essence of time—the one thing that inevitably slips away. Though a deep frustration welled within her; the only sense of home and contentment she found lay in the rhythm of a constant movement, yet it was this very notion she sought to capture. She longed for a fragment of time, a moment frozen in stillness, even as that desire frightened her more than anything else. In her search, she yearned for the infinite, that which perpetually flowed yet haunted her with its impermanence.
Yet, as the miles stretched on and her journeys grew longer, loneliness remained a constant companion. In every traveler she encountered and every story she heard, she sensed a shared thread of longing—an unspoken understanding that they were all searching for something indefinable. This realization brought her comfort; she began to see being lost not as a failure but as an essential aspect of the journey we call life. It was within the unknown and the spaces between destinations, that she discovered the greatest clarity. Ironically, it was when she wandered farthest from home, able to piece together fragments of herself, that she felt most alive, embracing the profound richness of her solitude.
As the years stretched on, she found herself perched on cliffs that kissed the ocean, wandering ancient trails through forests older than memory, and gathering by fires where the stars burned with an intensity she had never known. With each country traversed, every river and creek crossed, each mountain peak scaled, and every village explored, she began to grasp that the world truly held no definitive answers. She would never wholly uncover her essence in any singular place.
Heartbreaking and beautiful—with the recognition that the world was too expensive to be fully grasped, came the understanding that she was too infinite to be tethered to one destination. The ache of uncertainty, of perpetual searching, became her closest companion. And perhaps, she mused, that was the essence of it all: to keep moving, to keep seeking, even while knowing that she would never truly arrive.
While her friends had long since settled into lives of stability and comfort, she remained in places that were anything but. They built homes, nurtured families, and pursued careers, speaking of the future with a certainty she could only ever admire from afar. She had always chosen the unknown over the familiar, the journey over the destination. With the passage of time, this divergence became a source of acceptance. For she would not change; how could she, when this restless yearning was woven into the very fabric of her being?
The world, in all its beauty and ugliness, had claimed her long ago. She could never fathom remaining still, nor could she bear the thought of a life where the same streets and faces greeted her day after day. As time went on, she resolved the need to change that—to stop forcing herself into the narrow box that society had crafted for her. She would never conform, and she realized that wasting time in such a pursuit was a disservice to her spirit. The world was calling to her, just as it always had, and she knew she would always answer.
So as she stood on the brink of yet another departure, watching the sun sink gracefully below a distant horizon, a smile blossomed on her lips. She had come to understand that the essence of life lay not in unearthing all the answers, but in embracing the uncertainty of it all. The unknown promised a richness that the known could never provide, a life of true contentment scribbled by new adventures and experiences.
In the act of searching, in the wandering and adventuring, she uncovered the very questions that had fueled her journey. The world, vast and intricate, dwarfed her in scale, yet she found solace in her smallness. It was a reminder that she was part of something far greater than herself.
She would continue her wanderings, surrendering to the allure of foreign landscapes and the warmth of unfamiliar faces. In her journey, she had discovered that the truest path to self-discovery lay in an endless exploration, where the world opened up before her like an unwritten manuscript. She chose a life rich with possibility over the comfort of regularity, understanding that each new chapter invited her to delve deeper into the intricacies of existence. In this ever-evolving narrative—one where she was both the author and protagonist—there was no frantic search, only the essence of being, wandering through life in pursuit of her own creation.