I’ve been extremely interested lately in the idea of wanderers. There is an itinerant impulse in some of us that makes it hard to sit in one place for more than a few minutes, to settle down in one home or one city. An impulse that is weary of a settling of the mind that can accompany a physically sedentary existence.
At the same time, I used to get extremely stressed when traveling anywhere: did I forget anything, and why am I going on this trip in the first place when I have so much to do at home? These are the kind of thoughts that have pushed people I’ve known to become relative homebodies.
To me, nevertheless, there’s value in the motion between places. Something in the gentle rocking of a bus, or a boat; the visions of clouds or homes or people flying across my horizon.
Its instructive how breaking our routine in the place we live in can feel almost like traveling abroad. Or if we look at pictures of our past in albums, or our future in our mind’s eye, we feel as though we are traversing some ineffable distance. They are all forms of movement, and in that movement we can grow remarkably in our senses and our self-awareness.
