The Journey of a Traveler

For a long time, I always saw traveling on planes as an important event. I realize that during most of my childhood, these were sometimes painful goodbyes. When we left Venezuela I was 6yo – I don’t remember much of that event, I do remember landing in New Jersey late night.

These airplane trips always required preparation, so we would have to pack, make sure everything fit, go to bed early, wake up early, then we would stop at the airport and said goodbye to the people who were staying. I didn’t understand why we were going or when I would see them.

We used to travel between Venezuela and Puerto Rico in the off-season, sometimes we would take flights with several layovers, land in another airport outside Caracas, and either take a bus overnight to our hometown or reasonably near that a family member could drive and get us.

Saying goodbye was painful. It involved long hugs and tears, feeling you had a time limit to say something before you split; but also we were engaging with the unexplored, running through airport gates, acquiring a quick sense of navigation. After I was old enough we had a couple of trips that was me and my siblings – so I felt responsible. Traveling by plane always meant to me a complex task.

Not only was it taxing, it also defined chapters. When we moved from Venezuela my uncle died during the holiday season in 04, when I went back to Venezuela the financial reality I grew up in wasn’t there. Arriving to Puerto Rico as a kid to sleep in an empty apartment with inflatable mattresses and eating on the floor; my father getting deported to Venezuela and we all traveling with him; coming back to Puerto Rico without knowing that it would be the last time I would see my friends – the depth of events shocks me. People had moved, changed, or died in between trips.

Even in my college-early consulting days, I took it serious. Then I got a taste for more comfort traveling: Direct flights, reasonable fares, reasonable departure times, and lounge access. I started feeling more confident, I would impress people with my tips, and it felt like I was in control.

Not so long ago I started feeling off about traveling. I didn’t feel urgency, there was nothing I could think I could do, I would get paranoid because I felt that I was missing something important. Then the morning came, and everything feels as natural as brushing your teeth. I get there, I fly, I arrive, and I do my job without thinking – like pushing a leaf with my hand.

Then I knew. I stopped fearing travel. I wasn’t intimidated, but comfortable in it. I became such a proficient traveler that I would underestimate it. That was what made me feel off. Yet I was also feeling sad. I was sad because traveling lost its spark to me. I wasn’t intimidated by all the things I had to do, and I had come to terms with whatever happened to the people I saw and procured to engage with them as if it was my last time. But also it became mundane. I don’t register it sometimes, there’s no mystery sometimes, and it’s always a nuance. Then I started realizing that I am starting to process the amount of traveling experiences in my lifetime, the way my impression changed, the emotions involved changed, the chapters of my life defined by a location.

To experience love, pain, joy, sorrow, excitement, and fear; to mentally locate myself in different settings, with different people, and living at different paces. Sometimes it feels so tempting to just move that I had to consciously ground myself. The experience of all these impactful events in short periods of time. made me feel numb.

I would lay down to experience the void in me, but then my phones lights and someone wants us to meet in another country, I get holiday messages, I miss you messages, people are excited to see me and are happy when they see me go. I used to see traveling as an important event because it meant significant changes to my life and it was a significance that grew from pain, but that meant that traveling didn’t have to be significant. It’s like taking a bus with extra steps, you see people, you stay in touch, and it’s always great that each hug feels with joy and not sorrow.

I realized that I have changed. It feels natural because I am an experienced, competent, smart man that is capable of managing a trip without much thought. It’s like knowing my way, but even if I don’t it’s fine – because I crave the excitement whenever I can experience the thrill of mystery. Traveling no longer came from a position of pain, but a sense of freedom. Freedom to choose where my heart wants to be.