“The
capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you,
but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of
being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of
another person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the
other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to
the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the
other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be
taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.” - Osho
"Twenty years from now you will be more
disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw
off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your
sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain
"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you
to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and
friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential
things—air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky—all things tending towards the
eternal or what we imagine of it." - Cesare Pavese
"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors." -Terry Pratchett
"I miss so many places but I really don’t
miss any places at all.
Because missing a place is really a substitute for missing a group of people, a
mindset, a time - an era of your life defined by your surroundings because they
were different than anything else you’ve ever known. Going back to the place
won’t satiate the longing or quell the nostalgia, because no matter what,
things have changed, and people have moved on and the place won’t be how you’ve
left it. Sometimes returning to the city or the country just adds to the
emptiness of knowing that you can never return to those specific trips that
shaped you; you’ll never recreate those memories fading ever-distant into your
past. you can’t tug at the ever-flowing current of time to get just a few
seconds back of that feeling of truly living that was inspired by the confluence
of stars that brought you, those people, that place, those circumstances
together all at once.
So the only thing to do is keep chasing, chasing that wanderlust, collecting
more and more experiences that you’ll then miss equally sharply, leaving a trail
of goodbyes and adding to the ever-growing list of places you miss, experiences
you ache to replay, moments that define who you are. those places are home,
even if they will never exist again the way they did for you then." - I
wrote a note on my phone at midnight, by Marit B.
Where to start? I backpacked through Western Europe...by myself! During the beginning of my trip my stomach was in knots, I was nervous. I contemplated what would happen if I cancelled my plans. Initially, I didn't want to go alone...but I had no one to go with me. I've dreamt of travelling for years, and I was finally making my dreams come true!
