You Can Travel Anywhere, But You Still Take Yourself With You

One of the things I've always loved most about travelling is starting again.

Every six months, every year, sometimes even sooner, I could arrive somewhere completely new where nobody knew me. New room, new job, new people, new country. Nobody knew my past, my mistakes or the things I believed about myself. Nobody knew that deep down I thought I was stupid.

I could be whoever I wanted to be.

And believe me, I tested that theory.

Every new place gave me the chance to try out another version of myself. I could change how I behaved, the stories I told and even parts of my personality. I suppose I'd always been quite good at that. I got A*s in drama at school. I knew how to perform, tell a story and make people believe me.

At the time, I thought this was freedom.

The problem was that sometimes I wasn't discovering myself at all. I was making someone up. Every new place gave me another clean slate and another chance to decide who I wanted to be this time.

But underneath all those different versions of me, I was still there.

The Things You Can't Leave Behind

You can pack a bag, get on a plane and travel to the other side of the world, but unfortunately you can't leave your mind at the airport.

The same beliefs, anxieties, wounds and ways of coping have a funny way of turning up at the next destination with you.

I had beliefs about myself that had been there for so long I didn't even recognise them as beliefs anymore. I thought I was stupid. I thought my life was dull. I thought I needed to be more interesting.

I find myself laughing at some of these things now because I can see how silly they are, but the unconscious mind doesn't seem to work quite like that. Some of those patterns go right back to childhood, and bloody hell, they can be stubborn.

That's not to say moving away doesn't help. It absolutely can. Getting away from a toxic environment, bad influences or unhealthy routines can give you the space you desperately need.

Travel did that for me.

But eventually I realised that changing my location wasn't automatically changing what was happening inside me.

One of my dearest friends, Teja, was one of the first people to actually say this to me out loud.

I was visiting her in Iceland when she basically told me, “No matter where you go or what you're running from, you're still the same person.”

Well, thanks Teja. 😂

I didn't want to hear that.

I'd built this exciting life where I could jump from one place to another and start again whenever I wanted. There was something addictive about that feeling of packing everything up, getting on a plane and knowing another life was waiting for me at the other end.

I wanted to believe that was complete freedom and ignore whatever else I might have been going through.

But the reason her words bothered me so much was because I knew she was right.

Maybe Some of the Problem Was Me

As I got older, I started recognising patterns I didn't particularly like. I dated the wrong men and pushed nice people away. Alcohol was a big part of my twenties, and I definitely didn't always like the person I became when I was drinking. I lied, acted selfishly and sometimes hurt people. When someone confronted me about my behaviour, my usual response was to freeze and say nothing.

For a long time, I told myself I was just young and careless. Maybe that was easier than admitting that underneath some of that behaviour I was desperately lonely and, at times, out of control. Because if I admitted that, I'd also have to admit that I needed real help, and I didn't know how to ask for it.

It was much easier to look outwards. The wrong person. The wrong job. The wrong place.

Then off I'd go again.

Eventually, I had to consider something slightly uncomfortable: maybe some of the problem was me.

That doesn't mean everything was my fault. But I had to start taking responsibility for the things that were.

I also started to understand that knowing why I behaved in certain ways didn't mean I had to excuse them. I could understand where something came from and still decide I didn't want to continue doing it.

Understanding isn't the same as excusing.

Learning Awareness

So how do you actually change something you've been doing for years?

I'm still figuring that out.

But one of the biggest things I've taken from Buddhism is awareness. Not only sitting down to meditate, but trying to notice what's happening while I'm actually living my life.

What am I thinking? How am I speaking to someone? Why am I reacting like this? What am I feeling in my body? Am I actually listening to the person in front of me?

The Dhammapada begins with a teaching that I keep coming back to:

“Phenomena are preceded by the mind, ruled by the mind, made of the mind.”

I'm definitely not going to pretend I understand the full depth of that yet. I'm still learning. But after spending so many years changing everything outside of myself, Buddhism encouraged me to start paying attention to what was happening inside too.

I try to bring that awareness into ordinary things now — eating, walking, speaking, reacting, making decisions. Sometimes it's as simple as actually tasting my food rather than shovelling it into my mouth while my mind is somewhere else. Sometimes it's catching the words I'm about to say and wondering whether they really need to come out.

Sometimes I catch myself before I react. Sometimes I realise afterwards and think, Ahhh... probably could have handled that better.

But at least I'm noticing.

And I think noticing is where change starts.

“Travelling Is Your Passion”

There was another side to all of this that I had to figure out.

If I'd sometimes been using travel to escape, did that mean I should stop travelling?

Absolutely bloody not.

Around my thirtieth birthday, I went to Athens with my friend Dayana. We decided to take a trip over to Crete and, while staying in a hostel there, I met a lovely Spanish man called Miguel.

Miguel told me that his first trip outside Spain had been when he was sixteen. He'd travelled to London to see Queen perform, had the best time of his life and basically never stopped travelling. By the time I met him, he was in his forties and had been doing it for decades.

I remember listening to him and thinking, FINALLY.

Someone was speaking my language.

I'd spent years hearing the same question from family:

“So... when are you going to settle down?”

God, I hate that question.

There was always this idea that eventually I should stop. Get a house. Get a nice car. Find somewhere to stay. Do the normal thing.

And although that life didn't particularly appeal to me, when enough people question your choices, eventually you start questioning them too.

Maybe I was supposed to settle down. Maybe travelling was something I should eventually grow out of. Maybe there was something wrong with me because I didn't want the things I was apparently supposed to want.

Then Miguel said something so simple:

“Travelling is your passion. That's YOUR passion.”

Wow.

I loved that.

Finally, someone was telling me it was okay to travel and travel for as long as I bloody liked. If I wanted to keep going until I was old and grey, why couldn't I?

It sounds so simple now, but that conversation gave me confidence in the choices I was making with my own life.

And much later, I realised that Teja and Miguel had given me two completely different pieces of advice that somehow fitted perfectly together.

Teja was right: I couldn't keep running away from myself.

Miguel was also right: I didn't have to stop travelling.

The problem was never that I moved.

I needed to understand why I was moving.

Travelling Without Running

These days, travelling feels different.

I don't arrive somewhere new wondering who I can be this time. I don't need to make someone up. I don't feel the same need to impress people, make my life sound more interesting or like something simply because everybody else does.

I can just be me.

I try to listen more now. I care much more about what's happening in other people's worlds rather than constantly thinking me, me, me. I try to choose my words carefully, speak truthfully and be honest with people. I don't always get it right, but I try.

For most of my life, I thought I was dull, so I made up bullshit because I thought I needed to be more interesting.

I don't do that anymore.

My life is far from dull, but more importantly, I don't need it to impress anybody else. I have things I love. Other people have things they love. They don't have to be the same.

I'm also learning to embrace all that is me — my strengths, my weaknesses, the things I'm good at and the things I'm really not. I've spent so much of my life being critical of myself that saying I love me still doesn't come particularly naturally.

But I do.

And something lovely seems to happen when you stop trying so hard to be somebody else: the connections you make start to feel more genuine too.

I'm no longer travelling to become something. I'm travelling because I bloody love travelling.

I want to learn about other cultures. I want to taste food I've never tried, wander down streets where I don't know what's around the corner, hear languages I don't understand, meet people whose lives look completely different from mine and wake up somewhere new wondering what I'll discover that day.

That feeling still excites me as much as it ever did.

I haven't stopped moving because movement was never really the problem.

I've just stopped expecting the next place to fix me.

Movement is now an expression of who I am, not a search for who I could be.

I still don't know where I'll end up. Maybe I never will.

But wherever I go next, I'm quite happy taking myself with me.