Traveler’s Anonymous

    Just woke up, having a morning coffee, contemplating to myself whether a traveler can actually ever stop traveling? The reason this has come to me is that at present I feel the travel itch, again...  I want to pull myself away from the safety of day to day existence and throw myself back into the unknown. I like chaos and the whirlwind of experience. Jack Kerouac (the original Duluoz) in his own words explains best the kind of people I like to know.  “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved...” Lots of these people make up my travel friends. We’re a group fighting the normalising aspects of society, and the normalizing aspects of our very brains.

      Everyday life is about establishing and building patterns. It’s even hard wired into our brains. The other day in a class I’m taking we discussed how in early adolescents the brain has a second mass growing of synaptic connections. This renaissance of connections, which brings the possibility of learning MANY new things, is then systematically pruned down so that the connections that remain can work more efficiently. In this way our own brains are looking to limit us –if we let them.  We’re built to look for and take comfort in the patterns of our lives.  Travel is a kind of fountain of youth against this. Rather than stay within the confines of pattern it forces one to leap forward into the unknown of sensory experience. The traveler’s brain has to grow; has to modify; has to transcend itself. Otherwise, you have that person on a trip that sits and complains about how it’s not like home.

      I believe certain people can get a kind of addiction to the rush of travel.  For myself when I first arrived in the UK ten years ago I scarcely needed to sleep or eat for a week. I had a natural high from experience. Now time and time again, I feel myself compelled to try to regain that feeling... to take back that sense of excitement and euphoria. Maybe, I’m chasing the original high I experienced in the UK? Many of my travel friends are the same.  We all share that compulsion to travel again even if it means altering, delaying, or just out right changing our lives to do it. If we ever are to settle into regular lives maybe what is needed is some kind of support group – a traveler’s anonymous.  Like addictions groups we’d meet and try to slow this unending impulse to travel. Or, as probably would be the case, somebody would pull out some beer and the group would share ideas for NEW even more exciting trips!