Travel therapy has done me wonders.
A few weeks ago I was at the end of the road. That same familiar, old road that goes around my neighborhood and takes me to work and back home again. It’s startling to think our lives are spent in the same local places, going to work, coming home, going about your neighborhood, living the routine over and over again. Despite how interesting and fulfilling, or not, life might be, we all shuffle around on the same bit of turf doing our thing day after day. Even getaways out of town have become commonplace. The drive from Boston to Vermont has become as familiar as the back of my hand. Perhaps that’s why the seasons are important. They make the familiar new again, at least for a while and until that novelty wears off.
As for work, you can love what you do, but after a while that too becomes the same thing over and over again: New day, new people, new crisis, same old same old.
Then there is travel therapy.
Traveling reminds me that I still need to go down new roads, that I need everything to be different, exciting , surprising…again. It reacquaints me with my youth, when everything in the world was new and exciting and full of possibilities. The simple fun of just living life comes back as I go down new roads to new places. It doesn’t matter if the locals are all bored out of their minds going through their routines, from my perspective their world is exotic and intriguing.
Yes indeed, travel therapy reinvigorates me and helps me embrace my humdrum routine with new enthusiasm…until its effects wear off …again.
copyright Magnus Incognito 2015