I hear this sentence pretty much every time I meet people and tell them about my travels: Oh I’m sooo jealous! Or: well, I’m kinda jealous of your life. Or: I wish I could do what you do.
There are plenty of variations to the same thing. People want to do what I do. And every time I hear this, my response is: you can. You can do exactly the same thing as me. It’s just all about choices. Choose to give up everything you have; give up your job, your house, your family and friends, and just go. Easy as that. Right?
Well, I want to let you in on a little secret: I’m actually just as jealous of you.
I can hear some people chuckle as they read this. I travel the world, go to beautiful places, have amazing experiences, I go wherever my feet take me and do whatever my mind thinks of. Yeah, it’s absolutely a dream come true. Truly. Really.
But while all these things are gorgeous and amazing, I do have more dreams than this. As I guess everyone has more than one dream in life.
I never wanted a quiet life. I still don’t. I don’t want to be someone who sits at home and is just content with that. It might sound condescending, but although a lot of people are happy that way, I think that would be a waste of my life.
But I also don’t want to spend my life travelling. I want to travel, but I also want to have a home. A base, roots, whatever you want to call it. But surrounded by adventure and fun and excitement and all the stuff I love doing.
I left the Netherlands 18 months ago in search of happiness. Or in search of myself.. Or maybe I just fled from a situation that was draining my spirit right out of me. Maybe these reasons are all the same. I don’t know. But to use a few famous words of an Irish band: “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.
So I still roam the planet, looking for whatever it is that I am looking for. Will I even recognize it when it’s there? Will lightning strike and tell me this is it? This is your happiness, take it and enjoy!
My inner cynic, realist and rationalist tend to gang up on me and tell me it doesn’t work that way. They tell me that my dreams are too big and too stupid and unattainable. That the only way this works, is to give up on one part of your dream, to be able to maintain the other part of it.
My brain tells me that dreams never fully come true, because in life you just can’t have it all.
My heart can’t accept that.
I can not accept that this is all I get: half a dream come true, and another half as empty as ever, not even close, but so far in the distance that me reaching the land of Narnia seems even more likely to happen. Maybe Narnia is where all my dreams come true?? Anyone have a spare wardrobe I can try?
Anyway, for now I keep roaming around, wandering, in search of my dreams. And in the meantime I’m jealous of you: you who are content. You who have a home, are grounded and who isn’t lost and wandering.
Maybe you are not. Maybe you are just as lost as me. Maybe you are not content at all, haven’t reached any dreams, haven’t accepted anything whatsoever, but merely have the outward appearance that you do.
Maybe you are just stuck, and really want to go look for yourself as I do. Well my friend, in that case: let’s be jealous of each other.
But I’ll be jealous while watching an impossibly beautiful sunset in Japan. I guess you have a good reason to be jealous of my life after all… 🙂
