The privileged whimsy of my wanderlust

Frances Mayes, the author of a number of travel books, probably better known for penning "Under the Tuscan Sun", writes in the recently published "A Year in the World":

"One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. The breeze lifting a blue curtain in a doorway billows just the same whether you are lucky enough to observe it or not. Travel gives such jolts. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?"

I love that description and I understand it, because it speaks to my heart. That's what the essence of travel is; a jolt, a quick and deafening crash from the comfortable and the customary, which forces you to assess your life and the way that you choose to live it.

There are many people in this world content to remain in one place. While I can certainly understand that urge, I don't relate to it. "Wanderlust" is a beautiful word to me. As a writer, I love the way it rolls off the tongue; as a traveller, I find it seductively descriptive, capable of conveying exactly what I most want. I lust to travel.

In sharp contrast to me, my parents don't enjoy travelling. I used to think it was simply a personality trait, but over the years, I've come to realize where this inherent difference of ours comes from. I think that people forced to move, forced to abandon their homeland because of war or other unfortunate life circumstances in order to seek another future for themselves elsewhere, are "cured" of this travelling affliction I suffer from.

My parents, both immigrants from post-war Greece in the '60s, have never expressed a desire to travel and don't understand my need to constantly see how other people live. My parents' lives have always revolved around putting down roots, owning property, planting orange trees in the Greek soil they know so well, near the olive groves they first walked through as children. My wanderlust is a foreign concept to them.

My mother --a cautious woman-- doesn't like travelling to foreign places. It stresses her out. I used to look upon this as a personality flaw, a weakness of sorts, but I now know that caution is what the world taught her. Unlike my parents --who had a choice to leave, but only because they had no real choices left behind-- travel is a true <@Ri for me, and as such, it reverberates with options and unlimited possibilities.

Unlike so many others on this planet, I am free –and privileged-- to roam the world to satisfy my wanderlust and come back "home" when I want to. It's a privilege I am well aware of -- and grateful for.