Last Updated: 3/12/2022 (Added links)
Original Post: 10/19/2009
My daddy always asks what I’m running away from with my travels. A commenter told me to stop running away from my issues as well as to begin living life. “Grow up,” he said.
And, years ago, there was a blog called “Mom states I’m running away.”
I’m not sure why, however there is this understanding available that any individual who travels long term as well as isn’t thinking about settling down or getting a traditional task need to be running away from something.
They are just trying to “escape life.”
They are running away from responsibility, being a grown-up, heartache, problems, etc, etc.
Long-term travelers are all just Peter Pans refusing to be “adults.”
While society believes traveling is something everybody must do at one point, it’s only space years after college or short holidays that are acceptable. get it out of your system as well as come back into the Matrix.
Those of us who lead nomadic lifestyles, or who linger just a bit as well long somewhere before reaching that final homestretch, are all as well commonly accused of running away.
Yes, go travel — however just not for as well long the world says. accountable people don’t just travel forever.
We nomads need to have awful, miserable lives, or are weird, or have had something traumatic occur to us that we are trying to escape. people presume that we are just running away from our problems, running away from “the genuine world.”
To all those people, I state – you are right.
I am running away.
I’m running away from your concept of the “real” world.
I’m avoiding your life.
Instead, I’m running towards whatever — towards the world, exotic places, new people, different cultures, as well as my own concept of freedom.
While there may be exceptions (as there are with everything), a lot of people who ended up being nomads do so since they want to experience the world, not getaway problems. We are running away from office life, commutes, as well as weekend errands, as well as the business 9 to 5. We’re running away from the strict path society has laid out as “normal.” The one that makes us mindless ants marching to as well as fro.
We (I) want to experience every culture, see every mountain, eat odd food, go to crazy festivals, satisfy new people, as well as take pleasure in different holidays around the world.
Life is short as well as we only get to online it once. I want to look back as well as state I did interesting things as well as lived life on my own terms, not state I spent my life reading blogs such as this during my lunch break while wanting I was doing the exact same thing.
No one dies going “If only I had spent a lot more time in the office!”
As an American, my point of view may be different. In my country, the accepted path is long as well as narrow: you go to college, get a job, get married, get a house, have your 2.5 children, raise them, as well as then retire. only then, after you’ve put in your time, can you take pleasure in the fruits of your labor. society boxes you in as well as restricts your motions to their expectations.
And any type of deviation is thought about abnormal as well as weird.
People may want to travel, tell you they envy what you do, as well as state they desire they might do the exact same thing. however they never do. few people need to the guts to take the leap, no matter exactly how much their heart pulls them. They are just fascinated by a way of life so outside the norm.
While social media, the increase of digital nomading, as well as web sites such as this have made quitting your task to travel the world or show English in Thailand a bit a lot more acceptable, the general mindset is still “follow the path if you want to be normal.”
Well, I don’t want to be normal.
I feel like the reason why people tell us we are running away is that they can’t fathom the truth that we broke the mold as well as are living outside the norm. To want to break all of society’s conventions, there just need to be something wrong with us.
Years ago, a book called “The Secret” came out. According to “The Secret,” if you just desire for as well as want something terribly enough, you’ll get it. however the genuine trick to life is that you get what you want when you do what you want.
Life is what you make it out to be. Life is yours to create. We are all chained down by the burdens we location upon ourselves, whether they are bills, errands, or, like me, self-imposed blogging deadlines. If you truly want something, you have to go after it.
People who travel the world aren’t running away from life. just the opposite. Those that break the mold, check out the world, as well as online on their own terms are running toward true living, in my opinion. We have a degree of flexibility a great deal of people will never experience. We get to be the captains of our ships.
But it is a flexibility we selected to have.
We looked around as well as said, “I want something different.”
And then we went for it.
It was that flexibility as well as mindset I saw in travelers years back in Thailand that influenced me to do lead the life I am now. I saw them break the mold as well as I believed to myself, “Why not me?”
I’m not running away.
No.
I, like so lots of others before, am just running towards my own concept of a typical life.
And I never plan to look back.
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