Missing the Journey

Maybe it’s the sense of motion. Maybe it’s the actual getting on a bus, or a plane, or a boat and heading off somewhere. It isn’t necessarily the destination, or what I do when I arrive; it’s the actual motion of the journey itself.

Since my old job ended just two weeks ago, I find that’s what I miss the most: the physical movement of a journey. It is not the money I used to get paid–though I would love to have some extra cash floating in–and it certainly isn’t a sense of security, since my old job featured sporadic assignments with nothing ever guaranteed and sporadic, ineffective communication from the home office; it hardly offered any security. While most of the people I met along the way were happy, laid-back, and fabulous, I did have the occasional complainers and belligerent people who brought their problems with them on vacation for all the world to share, so I don’t miss the bullshit. I really don’t miss answering the same question twenty-seven times about where to board the bus for a group tour, nineteen of these questions coming from the same person. It’s true, in that way I’m relishing the break. Since I’ve had two weeks to relax, write, process, and contemplate, I find that what I really miss are the journeys. I miss boarding a vehicle, plane, or other means of transportation and just hitting the road.

Cindy and I are currently renting a beautiful modern apartment here in Playa Del Carmen with a tropical garden right outside our ground floor patio and another garden on the rooftop (with killer views of the sunset), so I haven’t exactly been crawling out of my skin the past two weeks. I haven’t felt like the walls were going to fold in on me and collapse my spine; my reflection in the mirror wasn’t laughing at me and calling me a dumbass. I have been to the beach several times, gotten a fairly decent sunburn on my back, taken a couple of nice swims in the Caribbean, you know–it hasn’t been horrible. I do, however, miss the road.

The more I think about it, it’s not just the physical movement from one place to another that I miss but the frame of mind I get into while I’m in motion. This has more importance to me than the place I’m leaving and the place I’m headed. Since I was a child, my best and clearest thinking has come when I was in the middle of a physical journey. This could be a plane ride, a car ride, or even a very long walk. The motion soothes me; in the physical act of leaving one place behind, I find I can also leave behind old attitudes, old thought patterns that might have been constraining me. The sheer power of physical movement relaxes me; I can ask different questions. Change can happen; even if I’m returning to the place I started from, I will never be the exact same person who left.

For example, I clearly recall a car journey from my early twenties where I drove around southern Colorado with my mom and pondered competing job offers out loud. At that point, I had the choice of two different options, and while the verbal processing certainly helped, I found I needed to leave my house in Navajo Dam, New Mexico, cross the border, and drive up to the base of the San Juan Mountains in the starlight in order to gain some different perspective and a resolution. The drive helped purge some blockages. I left a sense of “stuckness” behind.

This has happened to me multiple times since. Even a longer-than-average walk I find freeing. The mental process is the most important; I can think while on a journey. I can think while sitting on the couch, too, just not always as clearly.

I realize that every one of us has something different that they love about travel, something unique that moves them about a journey. What do you love most about being on the road? Feel free to leave a comment; it would be interesting to see.

Happy travels, and happy processing!