Flying out
One year ago today...
Time flies.
In one moment you are planning a trip away. The sort of adventure you might have only once or twice in a lifetime. The buildup is intense, and stressful, as you draw lines across a virtual map and fill endless Excel cells with a random assortment of equally useful and useless information. You book the tickets, download the apps, then settle into the idea that you are about to disappear for a long time.
You’ve packed everything but forgotten something. Self-doubt creeps in as you approach the brutal airport terminal.
Purgatory at the check-in line; frantic bag changes and weight adjustments in order not to stir the attention of the moody line manager. You get lucky with a few kgs overweight, but now you’re wearing a few too many layers that add to the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere that has surreptitiously settled in.
Your main bag is absorbed by the “oversized luggage” machine. You feel you may never see it again. And then, you remember: you haven’t bought a return ticket home.
Will you return home, you wonder?
And then, you take flight…
One year ago today, I flew out to China in what ended up being an incredible and unexpected five-month journey across East and South East Asia.
Without sounding trite, it was a journey inward as much as it was the converse. There was much to deal with at home: I had nowhere to live; my relationship with my girlfriend fell apart; I’d just left my job after finishing a master’s degree and couldn’t find new work; and I was nursing a nascent mental health crisis that I thought a long, long journey to the other side of the world would help me fix.
“Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you?…Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.” - Seneca.
I had in mind the type of adventure that would distract me from myself. But wherever I go, I take myself with me.
In planning for this epic trip, I forgot to process the events that unfolded beforehand. This culminated in a few down moments early on as I struggled against the situation. But as I pushed on, I started to give in, scribbling away about the Great Wall and giant Buddhas on top of mountains in China, tranquil onsens and the wonders of 7-eleven onigiri in Japan, 100% humidity (!) in the beautiful jungle city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, spotting endangered red-shanked douc monkeys in Vietnam in the pissing rain, and the absolutely incredible hiking journeys I had in Taiwan.
I hope to relive these moments while sharing them with you, whoever you are, since I made a promise to myself to keep a more indelible record of my travels that others are free to enjoy too. Perhaps this is another escape, but a lot has changed in a year. And now seems as good a time as any to start doing this, anyway.
Today marks one year since I started my journey. And in a flash, it was over.
In one moment I am packing; in another, I am sifting through spotty notes and travel photos long after the journey has ended. The beautiful cruelty of our fickle memory, and the inexorable march of time, reminds of the famous Hemingway quote about a Banker going bankrupt:
“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Til next time.