Neither here nor there

When I told people that I've been on the road for 7 years, most were surprised and shocked. "How could you spend such a long time away from your family? Don't you miss home?" and the occasional "Why?" were not uncommon. But the answer isn't a straight forward one in my case. I knew the reason why I left in the beginning, self-discovery, adventures, etc. But the reason has changed over the year; otherwise I would have achieved what I had set out to do and then would have gone home.

But one step led to another, one phase to the next. And I am still travelling. I still define myself as a traveller, a nomad and a pilgrim on the road. And the road has become my life.

The problem with this wandering lifestyle is just that, WANDERING. A non stop moving from one place to another, from one state to another, from one identity to another. Sooner or later I will be tired, exhausted and burnt out. And that's where I am at when I got to Colombia last year. After travelling, hitch-hiking, camping, trekking and couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.org) through most of South America for a year I was ready to stop. But stopping in a deeper sense of the word, like settling.

I was ready, or so I thought. I began looking for proper job that would give me some kind of stability and also at the look out for that someone to fill the void I had left empty in all these years. I would say I was almost desperate, and felt wound up like an old toy ready to explode. I gave my all in both endeavours; labouring profusely to find fulfilment in them. And after almost a year of trying, I came a full circle empty handed. No love and no money. I was defeated.

But once I accepted it and let it go I felt liberated. Liberated from the idea of wanting to settle down. The idea of wanting to be like everyone else and belong to somewhere or something. I was in love with the idea of being in love. I wanted what everyone else is having. Then the more I come to know myself and see myself and my "needs", I realised that it just isn't me, for now. I have not gotten to that phase yet, and am not sure if I have it in me to get there. The more I learn about myself and the more I look at what the society has to offer, I feel very claustrophobic just thinking about living a socially conditioned life.

Sometimes the sense of not belonging is over powering. We live in a world where we make sense of things by defining what it is not. So I am making sense of who I am by knowing who I am not? We will never truly know who we are because we are evolving all the times, those that are unhappy are those that don't want to evolve because they don't want to give up, surrender. I guess I'll never know who am I, maybe I am just a pilgrim of life.