Lessons from Emma
At 22, I feel incredibly lucky to have travelled far and often. I have travelled alone, with my family, with my friends, with other families.
This year, I visited Hawaii and England along with a few trips between Virginia and California. With all this expertise, I still have a fatal flaw as a traveler: I am always caught up in the question of “what’s next?”
This could be because since I moved to California, I have felt in flux. Over time, Virginia has felt less like home and Los Angeles more like home, but I am tethered and caught between them. When I am in my apartment in LA, there are days when all that gets me through is dreaming about the day I get to start packing to go back to Virginia. When I’m lying in my childhood bed in Virginia Beach, I think of my best friend picking me up from LAX and debriefing all the chaos I missed while I was gone. It’s a beautiful thing to call two places home, to be loved in two places. But I think this reality has made it difficult for me to exist in the present moment. The day that I leave, the day that I have to hug people goodbye, is always looming. Sometimes the day hurtles towards me, and I find myself asking, “how am I leaving already?” Sometimes the weeks crawl by and by the end I could not be more ready to leave.
I think living in this almost constant state of movement then stagnancy, hellos then goodbyes, has bled into the way I travel. When we were planning our trip to London, all I could think of was how excited I was to get out of my routine, to get out of LA, and jet off to a beautiful city I had only ever seen in movies or TV. It was going to fix all of my problems. I was going to find a beautiful British man and break his heart when I had to go back to America. I was going to drink my body weight in Aperol Spritz and walk miles around the city. I was going to experience Paris for the first time with my mom. My life would be exponentially better on this trip and afterward.
What I learned is that we are still ourselves even when we travel. Maybe even more so because our environment is changed so much, we cling to what we know. We cling to the semblances of familiarity that we can find because everything else feels so new and different and uncomfortable. We are forced to become steadfast in who we already are so we can make room for the new experiences we are having. Also, life doesn’t just stop when we travel. Health issues, anxiety, and stress are all still there and sometimes amplified. Plans change.
Don’t get me wrong, I still did A LOT of what I wanted to do in London. My mom and I explored almost every inch of that city (at least it felt that way). We didn’t make it to Paris, but we ate delicious cake in a French café in the West End. We did things we had never done before while travelling like going to the theatre and taking public transportation everywhere. It was amazing. But I was still me. And I still had to return to my everyday life.
Ultimately, I’ve learned that I need to start romanticizing my everyday life, too. I don’t want to just wait around, watching my life happen as a passive observer, waiting for the next trip, the next flight. I don’t need a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe to disrupt my routine and fix my problems. How can I have that zeal for life that I feel when I travel? How can I find that determination to make every single day count? I am the best version of myself when I travel, the most alive. What is stopping me from feeling that way all the time? Obviously, this is easier said than done with work and other obligations. But I think it’s important to at least try to incorporate the mindset we have when we travel into our daily lives. That way, we can freely enjoy the times when we do get to travel without the pressure on it to be life changing. We can experience a destination as it is rather than imparting our own desires and expectations onto it. We can be in the present moment.
I’m going back to Virginia in December for the holidays. This is the first year I haven’t had a countdown on my phone or a calendar with the day circled. Even though I could not be more excited to go home for the holidays, I know that it is better for the day to sneak up on me and, in the meantime, enjoy every sunny California day. I have so much to be grateful for and I don’t want to waste any of it by waiting for “what’s next?”