Thousands of Miles and There You Are

I read a novel recently about this girl who spends a season in each of the four corners of the UK. Written before Eat Pray Love, it’s part of that genre – about travelling to find yourself.

I hear some people hate Eat Pray Love but I personally adored it. Maybe it’s time to re-read it. Anyway. It’s a tremendous privilege to get to “find yourself” and it’s an obnoxious phrase but it reoccurs for a reason.

Maybe because in the business of our day to day we have no time to really discover who we are – we are too caught up in what we do. But when you step outside of your day to day, when you go to a place where you know no-one, where being alone is not a temporary state but a way of life, there you are. All distractions are gone and there you are.

I love to travel. I love exploring the unknown. I love the different foods, landscapes, the idiosyncrasies of different cultures, the things that are still, somehow, the same. I love the grandeur of the mountains, the calm of the water. I love the bustle of the city, the airport, the slightly terrifying exhilarating peace I find when there is no other human in sight.

I treasure the experiences I’ve had the things I’ve learned and I dream of new experiences, new adventures.

If this year is in some sense my own Eat Pray Love. My own opportunity to find myself, the way that I rebuild my confidence and figure out what the hell I am going to do with the rest of my one wild and precious life… where do I go next?

I’m not much given to romantic notions. It has been said that I don’t have a romantic bone in my body. They were probably right. But I had this idea that I would find my One True City, what I have called my Forever Place. There were moments where I thought I might have found it, but each time I have managed to fly away.

I love Berlin. Could it be my forever place? Maybe I’m letting go of that idea, and I think, given reason to, I could make my home anywhere. But with no compelling reasons to be anywhere, I still can’t decide where my home should be for April and May.