There is a kind of trepidation, a simple anxiety that seems to rise when one finds their life about to be uplifted, upturned, uprooted, folded aerodynamically and hurled towards some imaginary point. That anxiety bubbles, even when one has chosen it, chosen the trip, chosen the places, chosen the change. Places I've heard of and Googled, ogled at on monitors and book pages but places that have still not flooded my senses and dizzied my understanding. The restraint of people and places so familiar lean hard against those roughly imagined unknowns. Today was a spectacular day. A great part of my family came together for a farewell dinner, and I was flattered, over joyed, elated, but humbled. The question of why I would leave this arises all too easily. There are people, many people here who care deeply about me - plenty for any human heart to bath in here and yet still, a stubborn part of me holds dear to what hard won treasures may wait - traipsing through the unknown. I moved back for these people and yet I so quickly found myself watching my bank account tick steadily upwards, the calculator always near, and my mind always on the planes in the sky. The realistic observation is met by another one: there would have been no dinner had I not decided to leave. And I remember my Father's observation that our communication is always healthiest when I'm flung far from home. What sweet sustenance is in the act of missing somebody. How perfect may our image be of that person, framed and hung so nicely on the reassuring walls of our mind. Imperfections and faults, arguments and disagreements fade from the paint and print, and we rest comfortably in our own realities. It is a fantasy, however, because memories fade, sanded down by the ever present carving of the day-to-day. And eventually the inevitable finds its way and we come back. But why go? Why go? I go on the word of others whose eyes marvel in memory at the talk of such adventures already gone and done. I go for the simple curiosity. I go for the obligation of such unbounded luck that my situation presents me. I go to rack up miles in my legs and to marvel at the commonplace of others. And I go because my restless spirit, so bent on wanderlust has proved not to be aimless, but fruitful, as if following some guiding scent of the unknown. I'm following a sense of life that reaches for all its wide forms. Why go? Just for the experience, I suppose.
