Why there is no other

I used to think that “home” was a dirty word. There – on the road – life happens, full of exciting adventures, charming people and endless possibilities. No dull commute, 30-minute lunch break, troubled meetings or endless to-do lists are squeezed into a hurry weekend.

Why do some people want to go home, where routine seems to fall into the place where your will exist? This confused me.

My first trip overseas – a vacation in Costa Rica – made me fall in love with travel. For all of the above reasons, I realize why “vacation” is so romantic in the work culture. They have a freedom to contrast with the grinding of the daily company.

So when I finally quit, as long as I could make money, I started to venture into what the world has to offer.

I mean, who might get tired of life on the road?

OK, me.

Ultimately, I do want to be a full-time nomad. I long for a steady group of friends, regular exercise, a bar that knows my name, a kitchen that can cook, and my own bed.

Suddenly, I realized that “home” is not a dirty word. For a young, restless soul, it feels this way as an adult.

I began to understand someone who just had romantic ideas about travel: You can burn it. On my first trip abroad, 18 months later, I hit the wall and decided to shorten the trip. Then, a few years later in 2013, I decided to be a nomad for me to be no longer life, but to stop traveling full-time.

I said it’s time to grow up. It’s time to stay, from the nomads to… everything that happens next.

But the charm of the road and the business of traveling work kept me back.

As the years pass, I live between two worlds: one where I am traveling, eager to go home, and the other where I am back home, eager to go out again.

At some point, I long for cloning, so I can live in both and satisfy my dual desires.

After all, you can’t – shouldn’t – live forever.

Because travel and home are complementary forces, yang and yang. Without one person, you can’t appreciate another.

All travelers hit the wall, and at that moment, looking around, “I’m ready to stay in one place.” When and why this happens is a product of many factors, but I haven’t met travelers without this experience. When I started traveling in my twenties, it took me several years to feel this. But now, for decades, it happens in just one month.

To handle life, the brain creates spiritual shortcuts to help IT process information. That’s why we tend to drive the same way of work every day – it’s easy, which is why you feel like “you can do this in your sleep”. Because if your brain has to find a new way of working every day, you’re tired. These routines make us give a lot of life on the autopilot, so we have jobs, people, emotions, thoughts, etc.

But when you travel, you are re-learning your life skills every day. You have no spiritual shortcuts. Repack your luggage every day, say goodbye to the people you met yesterday, and try again to browse strange lands, languages ​​and people like you have never done this before.

It makes you tired.

Although holidays are temporary rest from life, long-term travel is different. When you travel for a long time (or move frequently), you won’t have a break. You keep trying to figure things out and keep breaking the rules. Your travel battery drains.

However, in the same way, the travel battery is required to be charged, and so is our “home” battery.

While some people can follow the same life, most of us cannot. We find it boring. We need a break. After a while, we are eager to break down the monotony of our daily work. Work, commuting, errands… Every day, every day, it’s like ants moving constantly.

So we traveled again. We had an adventure, met new people, tried new foods and had new experiences. Maybe learn, grow and expand our identity as a person. Maybe we’re away for a week or two, or we’re on a month off. Or we start working remotely and spend a few months. But eventually our battery drain: we were tired, and then we went home again.

And repeat the cycle.

Growth makes me believe that without someone else we can never fully appreciate home or travel. If I didn’t want to get rid of a quarter-century routine, my first year on the journey wouldn’t be that great. Again, if I spent many years moving, locker rooms and sleeping unstable situations, my bed would never feel good. If I spent a lot of time trying to get through stress over such a long time, I wouldn’t like the comfort that routine brings.

One person’s joy is magnified by another.

Travel and home are two aspects of the same coin. I appreciate everyone more now than I was a kid because I can experience both as I wish. I’m not trying to escape from either, nor do I go to extremes anymore. I just follow their ups and downs and flows, letting the battery of life decide when to happen.

And I think it is a wisdom that only emerges with age and experience.

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