I’ve written in the past about the side effects of long term travel like a restless heart, a new perspective on the world. But maybe one of the most insidious and secret effects of loving travel is the increased need for more and more travel to get your fix.
More than once I’ve heard people say that they will travel while they’re young to “get it out of their system,” before heading off to start a career and sedentary life. What I don’t tell them, and what they probably don’t want to hear, is that travel isn’t the kind of hobby you can just shake out of your system. In fact it’s the complete opposite: the more you travel, the more you feel you have to.
In this sense travel is less like a right of passage or life experience, and more like a demanding and raging addiction. The more I travel, the bigger the world seems to get, and the more I feel the insatiable need to keep moving, keep exploring and keep experiencing the great wide universe.
A Growing List
I would like to say that I have a list of places I want to visit, and I check them off as I go along. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work like this.
Rarely do I feel like I’ve truly seen and experienced a place with enough satisfaction that I couldn’t benefit from going back. In fact, the more I see, the more I feel I still need to see- with each trip and experience I come away with half a dozen new ideas for my non-existent bucket list.
Last year I finally visited Catalonia, and now not only do I need to go back to take another more in depth crack at Barcelona, I also discovered a whole world of new destinations I haven’t yet seen: the Pyrenees, Tarragonna, basically everywhere in Costa Brava besides Girona. And this is all just one small corner of Spain. You could easily spend years just getting to know this one country.
Travel opens your heart and mind to a world of places and possibilities. I want to go back to just about every country I’ve ever been to, and I’m constantly discovering new cool places I’d like to go. So every day my wanderlust just grows and grows, which is a real problem coupled with the second thing travel does to you:
Easier to Make the Leap
Once you’ve broken that fragile membrane between what you can imagine and what you can do, but it gets easier and easier each time to crash through. The more you travel, the more you realize how EASY it is to travel. And that makes it really, really hard to stop.
In my dazed procrastination state I find myself only half-consciously researching flights to Turkey, holidays to New York, travel deals to Central America. I can’t stop myself, even though I have other commitments. I just want to go, go, go all the time. I would too, if I found the right deal for my paltry current travel budget. I’d jet off to Nicaragua tomorrow.
Seriously, the pull of travel is so strong that people will sell all of their belongings, quit their jobs and leave their homes just to satisfy the intense cravings. When you put it like that it sounds a little dangerous doesn’t it?
How do you fight travel addiction? I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to know. I’m having too much fun!
Do You Suffer From Travel Addiction?
This post was written by me, brought to you by Travel Bag.
