It has been almost three months since we left our Zetros behind in Muscat, Oman and returned to our home in the Caribbean (after a brief stop in The Netherlands). Though we had an amazing time traveling, first through Eastern Europe and then the Arab Peninsula, a number of issues started to pop up.
Being on vacation, or doing extensive traveling (as we do), you experience life in a total different way, than when you have your “normal” daily routine in a more or less fixed environment. In the latter you automatically and constantly anticipate on what you know (like walking in the dark through your house, you know where to find the door, furniture, fridge etc). You are living in a routine, where your brains are more at rest, since they do not add memories (like sights, smell, sounds etc.) You are living from week to week, since often only the weekend gives you the option to deviate from the daily routine.
Now traveling, being constantly on the move, is something different, especially if your scenery is different, and keeps changing all the time. You don’t know what to expect, you may make constant assumptions of what you are expecting, but most of the time you have to adjust your assumptions to what the reality is.
When you are traveling through areas where many things are different, from what you are used to (like language, scenery, food, culture, habits and laws etc), your brains are in over drive to register all these new things. Your “hard disk” is bombarded with new information, new memories and experiences. That’s not only very tiring, but it is also a fact that often you don’t know where on the hard disk these new memories and experiences are stored. With other words, you start to forget what you did or saw last week or maybe even yesterday. And this happens while you keep on adding!
It brings you to a point where you have a hard time keeping up with yourself remembering all these beautiful moments, sceneries or people. Then what is the purpose of the journey?
Traveling extensively, with all the new experiences, on the other hand, makes you live (more) in “the now”. The adding of all the new experiences, leaves no room for thinking about the past or future. Especially when all these new experiences leave big impressions on you. Living in the now is also less worrying and gives more joy. So actually from that prospective there is nothing wrong about a life style of extensive traveling. It’s the “living now feeling” (especially when it is joyful), which lets you forget about time.
But are “modern” humans” made or designed for such a life style? For some people it seems perfect, for others not at all, and there is a lot in between. We ourselves, wanted to be able to absorb and re-experience all our memories, but we found it more and more difficult to do so, when you keep on adding on a daily base. Going back to our “old” daily routine and give our brains some rest and re-live our life from the past 12 months was for us a good reason to have a break.
Even a non-routine like our traveling started to become like a routine, which could cause the problem that you will not appreciate new experiences as much as you did in the beginning. This “issue” criss crossed our hard disk storage process at the same time.
When these “problems” start to cross your mind, more issues start to develop. What is it actually what we want, what do we want to achieve for ourselves and what about our “old life” and everything that is connected to it. Out of sight, out of heart is a common saying, which is so true, especially if you live on a small Caribbean island. So often we have seen people coming and leaving again. People you share a part of your life with and before you know they are gone and contact is then often lost. Family and friends (who mostly live their routine life in their well known environment) can often not imagine your life as a traveler, let alone what you experience. The longer you stay away the less chances you have to share quality time and experiences with them. You can relate less and less to their lives and they cannot relate to your life as a traveler. (But that counts for everybody, doesn’t matter if you travel for a week or a month).
So back to the question, what do we want? And with “we” I actually mean anybody who wants to live and travel like we do. The answer is for everyone different, because at the end of the day it is about balance, balance in life. Often we want it all, but you can’t often have the one and combine it with the other one. More simply said, you cannot be a full fletched member of your community at home and a permanent traveler at the same time.
Balance in life is what most of us try to find and that is not easy. Balance in life is achieving a life status of which you can say you are satisfied. Satisfied with what you have, what you do and with who you are. And again, this is for everyone different and based on numerous circumstances, not always achievable. There are many elements in life you do not have influence on, which can make it easy or difficult to find a constant state of being satisfied and hence have a balanced life.
I often talk to people about a very simple graphic about obtaining wealth and status on one side and the time we presumably have on the other side. One line goes up in a diagonal way (the wealth line) and the other goes down in a diagonal way (the line of our life time). It doesn’t explain the balance of life or when you are supposed to be satisfied. But it does tell you that life has a limit and that wealth (obtained by work and trade) does not buy you more time. I used this graphic to show people my search for balance. Spending time on things which makes us happy using the means we have worked hard for. I am not saying at all that those who work hard till their last days are not happy or not enjoying life, but still people often get trapped in a believe that more is better.
Being back home on our island, we have picked up our “old” daily routine of waking up early, do exercise, have breakfast and go to work. Weeks pass by fast and you are looking forward to the weekends. On one hand we enjoy it. It gives you rest and comfort and its good to be with people you know for such a long time. It also gives us the opportunity to implement our experiences and knowledge accumulated during our journey in our daily life and environment. You look at things differently and in certain cases you appreciate some things more (whether at home or abroad in our Zetros).
Traveling makes you “rich”. Rich in knowledge and experiences. You will be more objective, less judgmental and more appreciative. But you must not loose touch with your home base or reality. Yes, reality, and with that I mean, most of us travelers (the ones who chose to travel by themselves for longer periods of time), make a free choice to do that, to escape a daily routine, leaving behind certain securities and guarantees, to discover far away places and cultures and have a sense of freedom. It is a great feeling of leaving certain routines and responsibilities behind, be disconnected and live a less stressful life. And for a lot of us, we can do that for a long time, but there will always be a “home-coming” or a new urge to settle (somewhere). We are not made to be constantly on the move (the evolution took that out of us). But great is the disappointment when you come back to find things and people have changed. Also their lives go on, they have their issues and experiences of which you were not a part when you were absent. You think they all wait for you to hear your travel stories. But as good and exciting as these stories might be, others cannot really relate to them, especially if you have been away for such a long time. It’s an important fact overlooked by many long term travelers at the start of their journey, but down the road, most come to realize (sooner of later). Reality is the lives of almost everybody on the planet, working, paying bills, having a family, being involved with your friends and family, doing what most people do. Traveling is an “escape” from reality or at least a different (temporary) reality.
So should we stop traveling? Definitely not! You will regret later in life that you didn’t do it. For as we have the urge to wander over the globe, to see different countries, with their different cultures and sceneries, it is a must to continue to do so. We will! We need those moments of living in the now, having our brains fed with all the new experiences and feeling different when coming home and with that we can put our lives in different perspectives.
The months being home in a place called Paradise (and that’s what the Caribbean is), gave us the opportunity to find a better balance between our traveling urge and being in our comfort zone called home.
We will continue to travel in September this year. Our truck still being in Oman, will be fully serviced by then. We will go back into Saudi Arabia in the direction of Kuwait, from where we will enter Iraq and then Iran. We are very exited!
