My wanderlust started with a fascination for mysterious places like Dubai, Libya, Papua New Guinea, and Malaysia, where my uncles worked when I was a kid. (Blame them for my chocolate addiction, because I felt like I was consuming a bit of the outside world every time I ate a frozen Snickers or a Toblerone). I remember begging my parents to take me to another country when I was little, saying "Even if it is just Sri Lanka or Pakistan, please let's go!" Because I just
knew there was some secret that the world was keeping from me across political borders.
We never did go, but before I knew it, my mother had found a job in the US, and I was to join her. I still remember very clearly the Bahrain airport on May 8th, 1998, because it was my first time in not-India.
Fast forward fourteen years, and here I am sitting in Spain, being fairly boring. Just like my uncles, probably. There are moments when I am jolted by the realization that I am on Facebook in Madrid, when I really should be doing something more "exciting." But I can only handle so much excitement, and really all I want to do after a day at work is come home, drink tea, and watch TV shows on my computer.
I expect new places to push me to do things I normally wouldn't do, or give me energy to be more active than usual. This has been true a lot of the time, but there is just as much time that I spend happily idle, listening to Spanish life happen outside my window. For a time, I felt guilty or judged when I didn't go somewhere on the weekends, and out of this guilt, I would force myself to make day trips. As halfheartedly as those trips sometimes began, I usually came home feeling incredibly accomplished and rewarded, wondering: "What if I had not experienced that?"
Well, nothing, really. After all, you don't really miss what you don't know. But this is where I find the word "enrichment" most fitting. For every Saturday that I went on an adventure when I could have stayed in bed, I felt like I got an extra day of life.
By nature, I am not the adventurous type. At best, I am an extension of my mother's sense of adventure, and my father's reckless openness to new people and new things.
But there must be something in me that knows where to go next, because I've followed these instincts from Bakersfield to Davis (instead of Irvine) to Boston (instead of NYC), and to Madrid. Now it's telling me to go to India, after fourteen long years. Will I listen again?
I've tired of the big European cities (for now). I have no pressing desire to see Rome or Berlin or Paris (at this time
). At the end of the day, it's going to be more metros, crowds, meat, and big, historic buildings. And Madrid has plenty of that. That sounds negative, and I don't mean it to be. I would just much rather get to know small-town Europe and see the natural wonders of the continent while I am here. It feels right...and more conducive to epiphanies and self-discovery.
I'm painfully aware that I leave Spain in three months.
