Open mindedness is a matter of embracing the self. If asked, why I like travelling, I tell people that I believe the world is my home, and I am just going from one place to another, to experience new things and reacquaint myself with the old. Saying yes to the world has made me a happier, and perhaps more tolerant individual, and I love that feeling, and I was surprised to see it being reverberated in this video.
The first time I ran away? I was 9. I ran away from my home, down to the closed gardens of a neighbour’s house, and stayed there for hours with a book. I didn’t know why I did it – I ran because I could. It made me happy – that space where I was absolutely what I felt like being, and not what I was supposed to be – the nice, disciplined, obedient daughter of a set of parents who often felt like they were my children, rather than the other way round. A book filled with stamps gave me strength to go to the places I wanted to go. Pages filled with strange, wondrous names beckoned with their mysterious lure, and I promised myself I would go to each of these places someday. But then, I grew up in a house where I questioned the impositions set upon me and the answers given to me were vague. When I asked, at the age of 14, if I could travel alone, they told me I couldn’t because I was a girl and I didn’t know how to take care of myself.
I proved them wrong by running away. It wasn’t too far, and they didn’t know then, but for that short span of time I was someone else – not what I was supposed to be, but what I was going to be all my life. A wanderer and an entity without an identity. That dissolution of the self brought with it a rush of adrenaline that fuelled my moves – an almost spiritual need to seek and find, love the world, and the determination to not give into pressure.
In time, I travelled to places around the globe. That first time was an eye-opener. The entire planet was open for me to explore, and all I needed to do was embrace it with both hands. Was it difficult? Yes, of course. The spirit of adventure and the lure of the unknown, combined with an acceptance about things to come make a good world traveller. I would plan trips as I went, one move synchronised with the next to figure out my next destination, and after a while, it became an addiction. Travel inspiration came from strange sources – but the need to dissolve and lose myself into the glory that this planet possesses was too much of a temptation, and it is the most magnificent addiction to have.
On a summer day in the jungles of Borneo, I was traipsing through the narrow path marked by the guide when a strange flower made me pause and take note. I couldn’t remember where I have seen it before, but I was sure that I had. In the darkness of that tropical forest, I suddenly realised that the flower was something I had seen before – in an old stamp of Malaysia, part of a rare flower series, and it was a moment out of time when I stretched out and carefully caressed a petal, suddenly the enormity of my travels hitting me – memories from my childhood clouding my vision, an eight-year-old girl making promises to her self to plan and execute her explorations and carefully marking off names in a small, old atlas, concentration creasing her forehead into tight knots as she carefully charted a path across the oceans and the mountains.
The moment passed, but I can never forget the sense of being one with my surroundings, of being a part of the universal whole, and a sense of incredible peace spreading across me, where I knew for a fact that I didn’t have to run away any more. You know why? Because I finally realised that no matter where I went, I would always be home, and that was the moment when I finally stopped running away from myself and embraced it instead.
2 Responses
This was such a beautiful and relatable post! I too have been running, chasing the world and finding myself since I was a child.
So do I.