TRAVEL
A Journey Is Just a Long Way of Coming Home
Meditations on Travel from a Window-Seat-Sunset
“You couldn’t travel forever. When you stopped seeing, when you lost your curiosity and openness to the world, it was time to return to your starting point and see where you stood.” — Carl Hoffman, The Lunatic Express
I look out the window and watch as our plane cuts through the clouds to glimpse a setting sun halved by the horizon. For spectators on the ground, a rainy night has fallen. But for us, continuously gaining altitude, we delay the moment of darkness: turning back time, turning back the sun. Soon we emerge through a sea of clouds and find vast expanses of pillowy clouds both above and below us, with the horizon a golden band painted on the sky between. It is a sunset like I have never seen — a perfect takeoff for a flight that will bring an end to almost two full years of travel.
Long flights are the perfect opportunity to reflect on your journey, and to let the reality sink in that you’re heading toward the ultimate destination — for every journey is a long process of coming home, of recentering yourself.
The longer the trip, the better the homecoming. It truly is the best part of a journey — the anticipation, the messages to loved ones —then the warm embraces outside baggage claim, and smelling the familiar scents of home as you finally walk in and turn on the lights. And the days and weeks that follow have a renewed novelty, as you slowly begin to realize how far you’ve come and see how much you have grown. You view the old comforts and joys of home through a slightly different lens, as the prolonged time and distance allow you to appreciate life at home that much more.
On some level, the journey that has changed you is never truly over. You continue to live it with every day. No matter how hard you try to convey your experiences in words, no one at home will understand what it means to you. A friend suggested to me recently to prepare three different responses for my return: One, for the acquaintances who politely in passing, ask, “How was your trip?” To which the response, “It was great!” will suffice.
The second response would be for people who want to know more but aren’t looking for depth. You can list some things you saw and did, but you keep it brief and to a high level.
Third and finally, on the rare occasion that someone actually asks to schedule a time and sit down and “hear all about it,” then this is the only situation where you attempt to go into any measure of depth or vulnerability. I’ve found that this mindset helps take some of the pressure off when I find myself struggling to explain a two-year absence.
When my travels first started to be counted in months rather than weeks, I began to feel like I had to explain to others why I lived the way I did. As if something were wrong with ME for not conforming to the status quo. But I realize now that I am the only person to whom I need to justify my life, and that whether people accept that or not is out of my control. Being able to accept that has allowed me to plan a return home that minimizes unnecessary stress and expectations.
During these last two years, I have reached that elusive point where I begin to feel burnt out from traveling — where the thought of seeing a new place seems overwhelming; where the desire to get out every day with my camera begins to fade. So many experiences are still fresh in my mind, but I feel unable to process them until I’m home and can look back at them from a distance.
In the same way that the call to travel leads us to seek out challenges and experiences, the call to home is just as necessary: the reset that we need. When one chapter ends, another can begin.
As we reach cruising altitude and the sun finally starts to outpace us, I witness its dying light from high above the Earth. I realize while this day and this journey are both ending, in another place the sun is rising, and in that sense, another journey is also beginning. In the far distance, I see the faint, golden trails of an aircraft burning through the sky, and I wonder how many passengers are also looking from their windows to savor this moment.
Soon the light begins to fade completely, and I’m left with only my reflection mirrored in the window. The only place I can think about is home.
“A journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our doorstep once again… It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill. Indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable.” — Ryszard Kapuscinski, Travels with Herodotus
