Thursday 28 November 2013

wanderlust



She knows it sounds crazy. But her heart just does not belong here. There are days when she feels like this, here, surrounded by friends and family- is home. 


But there is a longing in her heart she cannot express, for lack of better words, a deep painful desire she cannot explain. She has been raised with comfort and glory among people she loves, and has always loved, people who love her beyond measure and it’s adversely endearing how much they’d do for her. It’s nothing short of that on her part as well, she’d give up the world, move heaven and earth if she had to – she is momentarily mesmerized by the enormity of love a tiny fragile indecisive human heart can fathom and the extents to which that love drives them. Love she concludes, is a terrible retribution, a persistent punishment God decided to inflict upon his creation – to keep them grounded, a reminder of how weak we can be, how weak we are. It melts the hearts of ice and stone, it bends the will of the strong-minded, it fights and consumes everything that stands in it’s way, it humbles and it prides, it leads and it follows, it spreads and it with-holds, it fights faith and belief and morale and upbringing. It pulls the rug out from right under your feet, leaving you unsteady in the moment you take to comprehend what happened.


However, her heart sighs not for the love, or the almost suffocating abundance of it, it sighs for the dreams she knows she may never see - The ardent desire to travel – the wanderlust. The thrill of the travel, the excitement to be somewhere you’ve never been, that constant state of discovering something new, the experience of different cultures, the flighty uncertainty of plans you have not made, the freedom she craves like a  bird craves the sky - freedom that arises from absolving of all responsibilities, free to do whatever one pleases without having to worry about it’s consequences upon others, free to make decisions without having to worry about what people would say, free to be you and me. All her heart desired, lusted for, was to wonder away in the beauty of this world. She just wanted to break the monotony of her routine, wanted to be away from what she knew, away from certainty, she wanted a change. All the castles she built in the air, the plans she had ready in her head, she wanted for them to be true.


 But she knows they will never come to pass – because those plans do not keep in account one key factor – the fact that there were people she loved, the staggering amount of love she harbored for them, and how it reigns her dreams. This beautiful love she had witnessed all her life, the very same love anchors her to one place and she fears she would never be able to leave this place. The fear takes root and makes her uneasy and it troubles her in ways she cannot fix. She has known home and safety, and security, and abundance and she knows this is what some people search for all their lives, but she is not one of them.


She is shattered at the lack of freedom, as she defines it, so every little chance she gets, she takes it. And it tempts and teases her, it invites her and she waves it away knowing she may never get that opportunity again, but she never stops dreaming about the wanderlust that feeds her soul.      


1 comment:

  1. Thanks you so much, so so much for such a wonderful gift. I love how you describe the desire to break through the shackles of being at one place and knowing few people and exploring the world that exists out there. There is a wish to grow up and there is a dilemma - how can she leave her loved ones and go out there without them. I can so relate to her in some ways more than others. There are some moments when you are fighting for that. freedom and suddenly you realise that you are nothing without the people in your life and you are nothing without your wanderlust. BTW, did you know I love travelling and nobody else in my family does. Thanks, love! :)

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