I had the privilege of travelling a great deal when I was younger. My Dad was an army man and because of his job we were all transferred over to live in England for two and a half years. During that time we took advantage of our almost 180 degree turn around the world and holidayed in places like France, Scotland, Hong Kong and Singapore. I’m also fortunate enough to have lived in Reunion Island on exchange for a month and visit Kuala Lumpur with a school trip. Pretty sure my parents snuck me off to Canada too somewhere along the line, but I was too young to remember. Point is, I did my fair share of long haul flights and overseas travelling early on in life.
So, this leads me to question; is that why I never had the urge to do a Contiki tour with my newly turned 18 year old friends? Is that why I never felt compelled to “do Europe” when I had my gap year? Is that why I’d rather put my money into my savings, rather than splurge on that around the world ticket?
I don’t think that this is talked about enough. Hello, my name is Mariah (hi, Mariah) and I do not dream of travelling the world. Does that make me boring?
Sure, my new years resolution was to visit a minimum of one county per year. But that doesn’t mean that I ever caught the travel bug. It just means that I want to work towards living a certain lifestyle. I know that it’s important to see the world, and I do want to. I just want to take my time with it. I don’t see countries as a chunk of colour on a map that I urgently need to stick my pin into. To me the term “traveled to” needs to translate into “lived in”. I have a lot of “places to move to” on my bucket list.
How do we define “travel”? I moved over from Western Australia and lived in Tasmania for three and a half years. Does that count as overseas? I took road trip’s every free weekend I had to adventure to all my undiscovered corners of Tassie. But I was only living in a small town during my time there, right? I feel like I haven’t stopped, yet I haven’t left the country in about 8 years!
My view is that, unfortunately, travelling the world as a lifestyle is not as glamorous as it’s often portrayed to be. Just because someone spent three months travelling around Europe does not mean that they “found themselves.” That comes from within. And the knowing that it comes from within, rather than from the beauty and adventure out there, can be painful. Maybe the people who are constantly travelling are also constantly running?
I’ll continue to aspire to live in all my dream locations around the world, rather than visit them. Wouldn’t you rather be a local than a tourist?
“A from place is a good place to have.”
Instead of starting to ferociously tick off those countries while we’re young, how about instead we start to collect “from” places? So far I’ve got 2. Not bad, I reckon.
