For the love of motion

I am a traveller and will likely be until the day I die.

I travel, not just across the world, but also across my soul, across my heart, or across a room to say 'hi'.

 Some rights reserved by Aitor Escauriaza

The reasons are always the same.

I travel to be surprised, for the thrill of the journey, for the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unpredictable - to escape the ordinary. I refuse to settle for ordinary, safe, familiar, and comfortable.

I travel to escape routine, predictability, and the placebo of comfort, because not only do they shrink my world, they shrink me.

 Some rights reserved by Josh Liba

I travel to be scared - to be pushed out of my comfort zone to my limit - to find new limits to conquer.

I travel to doubt - to doubt the things I believe about the world and about myself - that I might learn that some of them are not true and let go of them.

I travel to fall in love - deeply and madly in love with new places, new experiences, new people - because I cannot imagine a life not colored by love.

 Some rights reserved by CW Ye

I travel to see beauty - to touch her, taste her, hold her, drink her, wrap myself around her, be wrapped up in her, because I've gotten glimpses of her, and I'm intoxicated, addicted.

 Some rights reserved by B Tal

I travel to have my eyes washed in wonder - to see with eyes untainted by familiarity - to see miracles and magic in the ordinary and commonplace.

 Some rights reserved by CW Ye

I travel to find myself - in the hopes that by walking away from the things I have allowed to define me I find out who I really am without them.

I travel to kill the idea that I can hold on to people and things, to remind myself that all I can hold on to is me - who I am, how I look at life, and how I live.

I travel because I am not ready to be stagnant - because stagnant is for dead people.

I travel to survive, because the idea of staying stagnant, lifeless, barely surviving, going through the motions of 'living' scares me ten times more than the idea of throwing myself out of a plane or off a bridge.

 Some rights reserved by Stuck in Customs

I travel because life is motion, like a flowing river, always moving forward, and I travel to feel that motion, that rhythm, to hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, to feel the rush of blood through my veins, to remind myself that I am alive.

I travel because if I have one life to live, I want to live it in the real world, not through a movie or a book or someone else's story. I want to watch the movie of my life unfold; I want to write and read the chapters of my own story.