post travel thoughts 💭

I’ve been reflecting on travel, expectations of oneself, and the life we shape. Back in familiar surroundings, routines, and patterns, surrounded by known faces and places. Things are planned and predictable. Everything is familiar and done before. One returns to behaviors that one didn’t realize were old habits.

Sometimes you return from travels and it doesn’t just feel like a chapter has closed and a new one is starting, but as if you’re taking a step back. Or as if none of it happened.

I can’t ignore the pessimistic tones in which these words are written. I admit that adapting is different for me this time. But honestly, I think words like “good” and “bad” or “better” and “worse” don’t necessarily capture the essence of the phenomenon. It is different and perhaps not as expected, which brings me back to “expectations.” Not what I originally wanted to say, expectations as a rule for our happiness. The differing reality from our hopes as a seal of our unhappiness.

I realize more that my last trip was not supposed to fulfill any expectations, or maybe it was; but I was looking for fulfillment in the wrong place. On my first trip, I had more “goals” and ideas of what such a journey should inevitably do with the individual development process of our “self,” the mind, beliefs, and values. How it should help and teach. Perhaps partly as if it were something calculable, purposeful. Nothing in life goes according to an exact plan but everything has its purpose.

What I’m probably trying to say is: my last trip was more spontaneous and intuitive. Now when I look back, I realize how much I’ve grown and learned from it. The time in Bali was very intense and almost enlightening. I faced challenges - mental, physical, emotional - that I would never have thought of before. And Australia as well. Very intense, beautiful, unexpected, and profound.

Sometimes I think you have to get to know yourself anew repeatedly because as soon as you think you’ve met yourself, you discover something new and have to rediscover yourself. This also sounds pessimistic, as if life is a hopeless and endless search for our true self. And maybe it is, but it’s less pessimistic and more reassuring. Everything is in constant change and we are part of it. Therein lies beauty. The beauty of not taking things too seriously and seeing how life unfolds before us in a long, never-ending, rushing river. The beauty of not having to identify with something we identified with in the past because it helped us then. The beauty of knowing that everything that happens to us is unique. And thus equally beautiful. Even what we may see as unfortunate, tragic, or unfair. It happens to us just as it is at that moment, unique and final. Like a snow-covered mountain peak on the horizon of a clear blue sky. This moment will only happen once. Just like all the wonderful moments in the future. And all the pain and sorrow. Love and friendship. Sun, rain, a full moon, the waves crashing on the shore, and a flock of birds awakening the sky.

At the end of the day, the art lies in recognizing and accepting it. And finding peace within it. Finding peace in all these moments and being grateful for this gift. And even if this sounds like all unicorns and pink butterflies, I write this to remind myself that every chapter that ends and thus starts a new one is just as it is. Not good, not bad. It just is, and we live with it, and yes, that is actually somewhat relieving, isn’t it?