Once you have decided to break up with your life, to start over and reboot, what happens after the rebooting is done and the systems have been reinstalled? I have now been back pretty much over 4 months (note: at the time of publishing this article on blogspot.com) from a lifetime adventure that brought me to endless streams of marvelous Kiwi magnificence; an experience I never for once regretted having, and experience it was worth living for. But no one tells you how hard it is to come back.
Living a life to be able to fulfill your dreams is the greatest gift that life has to offer. Yes, I know, you called me crazy, you called me foolish, but I do not for one minute regret having been where I was. The problem is not the past, it is the present.
“So long, it was so long ago But I’ve still got the blues for you”
GARY MOORE
Coming back from travelling is essentially like trying to cope with the end of a relationship. If both coincide, then you are probably even facing more trouble than you’d like. Especially when trying to find your emotional balance and fit back in with the “old folk”. I don’t mean this in any way disrespectfully. I think travelers choose to travel because we feel a yearn, for freedom, to discover. This is how I feel whenever I make plans to travel. However, I know that there are people who do not feel this way, and they stay the pillars rooted in the earth to catch us when we get back and are low, like really low, because we have just been to amazing places, and now, well now it’s all over. These are the friends you need in your life.
Never forget where you have been…
Maybe not all feel the same way after getting back. Judging from social media updates, there are a lot of blues out there at some point. I know it took me enormously long to fill out another post in this travel blog. Well essentially, the travel blog is over because the travelling is over. But sometimes you feel the need to reflect on the aftermath, the après le voyage feeling. And this may take 4 months, it may only take 4 days or a week.
…and remember where you are going.
Is there one simple solution on how to cope with and deal with coming back? I believe that there is not. Just as with the end of relationships, these things take time. I know that I am grateful for everything I experienced, and such are the feelings that no one can steal. But the more I go on and try to enjoy the present gift, the more I look back and wish it was still not over – that tomorrow would still be a day voyaging through endless meanders of wonders. There is still so much to see and so much to do that one life is too short.
It is life they say
In the end, what are the lessons we learn from life? We fall down, we get up. We burn, we survive. We love, we hurt. We travel, we return. And then, what is left, are memories of great days gone by, and we look back at the pictures and remember that we are grateful for all that we have lived, the good and the bad. It is life they say.
And if you had just one wish left, what would it be?
