Traveling is my masochistic addiction. I don’t travel because it is luxurious, or even to take a vacation. It isn’t always drinking margaritas on the beach. Traveling is stressful! Constantly figuring out where I need to go gives me low-key anxiety. I have to avoid people badgering me to take their ride or buy their product. People try to charge me way too much and I often have to raise my voice in order to be left alone.
However, all of this gives me an adrenaline rush, and at the end of the day when I reach my destination I feel really good. The endorphin rush of surviving such stressful, precarious situations is probably what keeps me coming back for more.
I like to use travel to challenge myself. It breaks up the monotony of the daily grind. I’ve proven to myself that I’m capable of doing things I previously thought impossible. Each time I accomplish a travel goal, I start to crave more. For example, after realizing I could cross Africa overland by myself on public transit, I became interested in the new challenge of hitchhiking.
You don’t have to travel the world or put yourself in dangerous situations to understand my masochistic relationship with travel. Athletes, gym goers, runners: how much do they actually love doing their physical exercise and how much of it is the challenge, the satisfaction of accomplishing goals and of course the physical high? People in highly demanding jobs often have to work long hours and drink excessive amounts of coffee in order to solve a problem, but once they do they feel on top of the world. Deriving pleasure from otherwise difficult, stressful situations is inherently human. Unlike other mammals, we are not just focused on survival; social and personal gains also drive our behavior, and the pursuit of these gains sometimes leads us to unsafe situations.
My point is that a life of traveling is not only the highlights you see on an Instagram account. Those beautiful moments stand out among the shades of gray, and in retrospect they are the ones most people decide to focus on. A sunset on the beach is all the more meaningful when you had to go through some shit to get there. Travel has shaped me into a stronger person, and I’ve been high as hell (the natural kind of high your body produces) along the way.
Chronicles of a Wandering Soul 