Fernweh...or the cure to everyday monotony

I love traveling, I always have since I had the opportunity to do it for leisure and not exclusively for need. As a child from a migrant family and expat, my first traveling experiences were neither desired nor planned in advance, but in most cases urged or induced by intolerable situations. But now, as an "adult" with an income and freedom of choice and movement, I cannot think of a better way to spend my non-working time and make the best out of my free life than going abroad, as far as I can afford or it is possible in that shrunk time period when I feel the need to go away, disconnect, realign myself with my mental state and find the joy of life again after a stressful, or just fully immersive, period.

However, sometimes - pretty recently actually, maybe as an effect of feeling closer to my 30s and starting to fall under the pressure of societal expectations for young adults, or maybe just as a result of my lonely back-home train journeys - I started thinking that the pleasure of discovering new places, the joy of getting to know new people and the thrill of living new experiences are actually shrouded in a darker shadow. Some people may see it as escapism, or the desire to escape real, boring life, while I think that in my perception Wanderlust, a desire to discover, and Fernweh, a longing for far-away places, are the forces that drive me into this crazy, unexpected, on a budget, short trips.

(Reality check intermezzo)

Surely, Ryanair flights, Flixbus and train endless journeys, cheap meals and hostels are not what people think about when they look at their dream destination pictures but that is the core of most of my traveling adventures. It may not be luxurious and always comfortable but definitely full of surprises, unexpected encounters, and life lessons. I love it - or maybe I am just too used to a life of struggles and with almost no comforts, like that year that my family and I ate pasta meals for 4 times a week given the low income of my father's job (a story for another time) or my university years on a tight scholarship... I know other people can relate to this - as well as to the 'guilt' of enjoying themselves with their money instead of only saving it for future, adult things, like a car or a house (parents' burden trauma). Definitely, one can be a mindful person in both cases.

Even if I could, and sometimes I think that I actually can but do not want, I would not change my way of traveling, apart from probably trying to make it more sustainable and green.

(Back to the main topic, Wanderlust and Fernweh)

Taking a bit of a distance from this idealized German philosophers, artists and scholars' version of traveling that I, and a lot of other people, find romantic and can even remotely relate to,

I come to realize that whenever I am traveling I am sort of willingly, forcedly and necessarily, apart from literally, taking a distance from my everyday life, my routines and most of all, my worries and problems. Therefore, yes, maybe we travel as escapists, but not all the time for such extremely serious and worrying reasons.

I traveled on many occasions, when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was young, immature and inexperienced, when I was feeling "old" and compressed down by my responsibilities and by my peers' lives' milestone goals, when I was in company and at the highest point of being in love, when I was alone after the most painful breakup of my life so far... On all those occasions I met locals with kind hearts and open minds and I met travelers with a lot or less experience sharing life lessons and personal stories.

Most importantly, during and after every trip I found little pieces of myself that I didn't think I have or that I hadn't yet discovered or that I thought were lost forever.

On my first ever plane journey, when I was leaving my first home and my family in Argentina, I thought that traveling was a sad and scary experience for the uncanny. Whenever I sat on a plane, train or bus sit after that day I've always been excited, nervous, thrilled, and curious. Who knows how would I be without that first-time travel...

I do not regret it, as I do not regret my life full of uncertainty, struggles and emotional rollercoasters. Without this I wouldn't be me and I wouldn't have the wish to discover, explore, get to know more and improve myself.

No journey lasts forever, and every time I am coming back from a trip this enormous sense of nostalgia, boredom and loneliness hits me. It happens now more than before since there's no family, no friends, no partner waiting for me at home. Sure, I can call them, text them and share my pictures on social media to tell them how amazing the trip was. But at the end of the day, the adventure is over and I have to go back to my normal life with my desk job and my daily chores.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CsmPQZnuYCT/?hl=it (Audio - shorter version of poem above)

My mission now is to make every day feel like an adventure, with and for myself. Traveling is lovely, exciting and wonderful but so should be everyone's life lived in a healthy and positive perspective - therapist's words.

What would you do to start this mission for yourself?

Comment below!