The happiness is real only if it is shared (Chris McCandless, Into the wild)
Although my ability to adapt is very strong the same thing cannot be said of my ability to face up to the changes. Maybe my capability to adapt quickly to places and my ability to know new people makes me be a more emotionally and vulnerable person to change. Because, the more you get used to a place quickly and you get to know the people you live in, the more we will miss it, the more we will be struggling to leave it.
It’s the same thing that happened in my life when I left Sydney but also in the lives of others when I left the City. The heart and the feelings of man are always in balance, and so although I was desiring since a long time to do that trip to Australia I felt much sadder to leave the city and friends rather than feel myself electrified or excited. And now, those dual feeling come back, not with the same intensity and meaning of course, now that I have to leave Jaisalmer and the place I’ve been living in for a month and in which I felt at home and protected, and I have to go back on the road with all that involves in a Country like India.
The only thought that calmed me and made me still and still does it today is the awareness that things change constantly in life, sometimes we just endure change them, sometimes we are the creators of it.
It can be said that the journey itself constitutes a change, first of all, a change of physical place but also, and sometimes above all, a change within ourselves.
There are things that despite the passing of time, years, and with the increase in experience, however, do not change. We tell and we convince ourselves that it will be better, that next time we will be more prepared, instead no, everytime certain events will re-emerge, we will never be prepared enough.
I’m talking about goodbyes and farewells with people that maybe, indeed probably, you’ll never see again in your life.
Traveling is one of the most beautiful things you can do in life, it is the greatest luck you can have, along with love and health obviously. But it is above all, a privilege that not everyone can have.
It always says how much travel is an unforgettable experience, how wonderful it is to spend months abroad to learn about cultures, uses and customs that are different from ours, the sense of freedom and adventure that we experience, and of course all this it’s true, I decided to open this blog above all, for this reason, to be able to share with people my travels and my experiences around the world. So I will not dwell on this rather obvious and evident aspect.
But rather, I would like to concentrate on the toughest and worst part of the journey, the goodbyes, the time when you have to greet a loved one or a person with whom you shared a part of it. These farewells are not like the others, they’re particular because they happen after intense and special moments lived together.
Good-byes and greetings for me have always been difficult, I still remember when at the end of the summer or winter holidays to my grandparents’ home in Puglia I used to cry a lot or during my first experience abroad, a study trip to Ireland, when while I was greeting the couple of old men who had hosted me I was sad and didn’t want to go home. I didn’t know that those were signs that already indicated a propensity to travel, nomadism, not feel homesickness, but at the same point, the ability to create links or connections with people from different countries and cultures wherever I was.
When you travel you meet so many people and with some of them you share important moments of life, moments when you discover parts of yourself that until then you didn’t know, moments where you discover a different country together, moments when you laugh, but also where you may weep, where you have to face, to deal with difficulties, etc.
The conception of time when traveling change drastically and so, for example, a handful of days seem to us weeks instead. Often when you travel or stay in one place you lose the knowledge of the time. You can imagine then how these kinds of relationships born in these circumstances are far different from those that may arise in everyday life.
Greeting a person who leaves, leaving a place dear to us, taking different roads, is one of the most difficult, strong and sad things that can be done during a trip or an experience abroad. You will never get used to it, and maybe that’s right.
The paradoxical thing is that if we feel so bad and sad it is because we spent a good time, otherwise we would not suffer so much. So a very positive aspect is at the same time the cause of the feeling of sadness.
The fascinating thing about traveling, especially for those who do it without limits of time, in a freeway, is to meet traveler like you, people who’re working/traveling/spending time abroad with whom you tell and share travel experiences or advice, it’s a continuous wandering, exploring, tasting the world we live in.
The traveler’s life is also this, it is like being on a carousel when you are over there you enjoy and you are happy, but then, you have to get down and maybe some people will take the place of others, but it will not be the same thing anyway. The tune, the bond, the connection that can be born with a person is not something replicable.
Behind the traveler’s life hides the awareness that for everyone will come the time when you’ll have to leave a place that had become a home, to resume its own way. The moment in which groups of people entered so much in tune will have to dissolve.
It’s as if every time you leave a place and greet a person, you leave a piece of your heart. So try to imagine how many pieces of your heart a traveler could have spilled around the World.