Restlessness

“By relocating ourselves, reorienting ourselves, we shake loose the shackles of expectation. Adrift in a different place we give ourselves permission to be different people.” – Eric Weiner

There seems to be a lot of chatter about changing on the inside. If you can’t be happy here, then you can’t be happy anywhere. Traveling is escapism. I must beg to differ and sometimes I wonder if this kind of talk can come from people too scared to take a chance or resentful that they never did.

The more I travel, the more it becomes clear that at least for me, the environment makes a difference. I’m comfortable in Vancouver with a thorough support network and everything I need available to me but “comfortable” isn’t currently part of my inherent definition of the good life. So if I have the opportunity to act on my restlessness, I’ll take it.

A quiet lady that I met at a workshop told me about her move to Vancouver from the Netherlands. She was criticized. Her friends and family thought she was looking for something else and/or that the Netherlands wasn’t good enough for her. It was neither, she said. She didn’t elaborate but I found that I felt the same way.