Wander Lust

In Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, writer Garcia- Marquez’ main character muses that, “sex is the consolation for those without love”. Lust and its remains are what we have when there’s no romance to set our hearts on.

But what about other types of lust, such as the seemingly insatiable desire for travel and discovery – the pursuit of the next great adventure? It perhaps begs the question, is travel then the consolation for those without a home?

I was watching the film Into the Wild recently, about one man’s adventure trying to break away completely, and I thought about my own travels. At some point when living far away from home you’ve got to ask why you do what you do, what drives you on? And when is enough enough. Or is it never enough?

Wanderlust, although incubated as a child growing up overseas, truly began for me as the search for a better job and a different life. Nearly every move I’ve made has been because of work – at least consciously. If you’re from a smaller place and you want to advance your career beyond a limited number of choices, it means heading to the big smoke. It’s also a world of different ideas, a wider spectrum of thought and experiences. Not necessarily better, but definitely different. You see more, experience more and hopefully learn more. And working in another place is a great place to start.

And then there is the possibility of discovery.

Personally I never really wanted to travel and live in America or Europe – but Asia always fascinated me. Perhaps it was because I grew up in Canada, went to school in the US and had visited Europe with my parents a few times as a child – so the idea living there never inspired me. What stands out in my childhood memories are my father’s visits to China and Japan, and all the weird and wonderful things he brought back from there. Completely different from all I was or all I’d known.

One of the first travel writers was the great Greek historian and story teller Herodotus. 2500 years ago he wrote concerning the nature of the political world of his time and his musings on sciences and the natural world. He was arguably the first historian, and certainly the first to methodically travel around the known world in order to write about it. But as he admitted, much of this travel was for personal reasons. “All men’s gains are the fruit of venturing” he wrote.

I wanted to live in a place where I knew nothing and could venture everything. To be immersed in difference and to try and understand that, for its own sake. Even to this day as I sit and write this, I will finish up then walk out my door this afternoon and visit a new part of Bangkok, perhaps see a new gallery or restaurant, maybe meet someone new and perhaps even have a life changing moment.

The Byzantine monk Mochos said that the power of travel is to see life through new eyes – to awaken your senses to the beauty and diversity of life – and that seems to happen more easily away from the familiar. New food, cultures, people, language and customs. But then many of the early travelers such as Mochos also had the desire to move away from his fellow religious cohorts and move beyond the sobriety of a cloistered existence.

There is discovery and self-discovery, and then there is escape. Freud being Freud put it his way. “A great part of the pleasure of travel lies in the fulfillment of early wishes to escape the family and especially the father”

But surely it’s not just the father we escape from.

For someone like me moving away gives you chance to move away from people who already know you and have you all worked out. Most of us are a work in progress, but family and friends, particularly a smaller place, have a way of defining you that is hard to move on from. Sometimes, some of us, need to go away to break away. To have the chance to define yourself anew. To not be confined by a school or a class or a system – but to live forwards for a while. To live that every day is an exciting existence - whether you are backpacking, on an extended holiday or working overseas indefinitely.

To be surrounded by all that is new and different, to indulge the realm of you senses, to always be indefinable. There is much to be gained from a new place, if you are open to it, it can teach us about the common human truths among all of us.

But one of those truths is, ultimately, that we are all looking for belonging. You learn that home is not where you’re born, but where you are accepted for who you are. Being different is cool if you are celebrated for that, but becoming addicted to difference is like the lover who cannot get beyond the sensual allure of sexual conquest. At some point if you want more, you need to stick around to get under their skin.

Changing for the next hit is just a way of avoiding living day to day with the harder, and perhaps more rewarding, stuff of life. But for the travel bitten, fighting against the urge just to keep moving on and create a new thrill can be the hardest thing.

Many fellow travelers find belonging away from their homelands – and make a new home. Others keep on moving, hoping to find that place the next time around. Still others will go back to what is more familiar and known.

I don’t know where I will end up, but these days there is little excitement in just moving on. Wander Lust may seem like a constantly renewable energy, but its flame seems less bright and its rewards more fleeting these days. And the attraction staying in one place and calling it home seems real to me.

In the famous quote by John Burroughs, an essayist and naturalist who was on the road for many years, he says that: “Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss.”
Yes you can be eternally new, and fresh and smooth. But few realize he finished this sentiment by saying “and a little moss is a good thing on a man.”

I guess I just need to stop long enough to find that out for myself.