“Here I go again”…”On the road again”…traveling…exploring….
This travel in the United States of America, meant to last six months, is for longer than at any other time in the past, though in a country that I have spent a considerable amount of time in the past, no less significant a visit and exploration….
Recently I was once again reminded of Chris Rea’s Curse of The Traveler, a song I was first introduced to — if my memory serves me right — by my good buddy and colleague Jayjeev, way back in the late eighties when we were still high school students in Kathmandu.
Here’s the song to begin with.
The music, kind of haunting and soothing at the same time, and the lyrics, talking about something I didn’t quite understand then, had me hooked.
During my nomadic life of studying, living and working, and traveling and exploring the world, I came to enjoy and appreciate the song more and more as it began speaking to me.
My nomadic life began with my going to the UWC of Adriatic (UWCAD) to “Learn About The World And People.” At the UWCAD, while I was fascinated by — and learned about — others, I also learned a great deal about myself, my country and the cultures I was a part of. It was there that I started asking the big questions “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “Where am I going?” and “What is this world and its people all about?” considerably more earnestly, which put me on a path of travel and exploration for almost 25 years!
You can’t imagine what’s out there or who/what you have the potential to become…unless you explore the world! Trust me! And I have barely scratched the surface of this marvelous planet!
You don’t know who, what and how you are until you lose your sense of who, what and how you are, until you lose that sense of certainty you might have had about your self! And that can happen only when you are willing to question yourself, something you are forced to do when you live in countries and cultures completely alien to you.
That can also happen when you are open to having relationships with people you could have never been with in your own home country, or imagined being with, when you are open to doing things that you couldn’t have done at home or never imagined doing.
Only then do you begin to think about — and view — things, events and the world in ways you never imagined you could, or even possibly would!
What’s more, the more countries, cultures and people you learn about, the more you see and discover about them and yourself, the more you realize there must be more!
The curse of the traveler, I think, is being condemned to a life of travel and exploration, always believing that there must be more….
