Tripping over

There are many fine lines in life: between love and hate, pleasure and pain, success and failure. Travelling puts this already-too-skinny line on a diet, starving the barrier that keeps us from the horror on the other side to the point of transparency.

Yes, you can have some of the most rewarding experiences that life has to offer. Yes, your mind is expanded in a dozen different directions all at once. But a huge part of this enjoyment, this fulfilment, this satisfaction is the fact that we can tramp so close to the other side without even realising it.

Because each one of our senses is engaged in trying desperately to absorb the new world around us, we become so absorbed in the experience that we forget the pain that can exist side-by-side with pleasure. We forget the hate that balances love.

So when we slip, tripping over that now anorexic line, we can fall hard.

Ignorance is only bliss for as long as we can stay ignorant. If the hard times manage to creep up on us, we are caught by surprise. Who would think that standing in line to cross the border into Canada could so quickly lead to a violent, physical arrest (as happened to someone in the line ahead of me)? How was I to believe that the owner of the cafe wouldn’t actually give me a job, despite her frequent reassurances? When, how, why did that person so suddenly leave our world back home? It isn’t fair! Where did this pain suddenly erupt from, how did this tragedy sneak into my wonderful worldly adventure? How am I supposed to feel about it? How do we react?

When we are torn from our ideal world of travel and happiness it happens quickly and without warning. Being so far from the comforts of home makes the shock harder to bear and the disbelief can reverberate far louder than when we are in a familiar place.

All of a sudden the brilliance and the wonder of the new things which surround us lose their attractiveness. All of a sudden we are lost. The wide world becomes a scary, claustrophobic place which has us trapped far from the security of our known lives. All of a sudden the freedom of travelling becomes a fear of being so far away.

But the thing about love and hate and about pleasure and pain is that they are mutually reliant on each other – one cannot exist without the other. This is not always an easy truth to accept when you are on your own thousands of kilometres from home, but it is an essential part of travelling.

It is hard to remember, but this is one of the reasons I am here. I won’t always know what I am doing here. I won’t have my safety net to help me deal with those sneaky problems that come crashing into my new world. I will want to pack it all in and come home. But then tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I will be reminded. I am here because of this. I am here to live through this. I am here because I want to be.

It may be a thin line, made even finer by my distance from home... But every time I trip over, I will to try to remember that the other side of it isn’t far away.