Apparently, it just did.
Clichéd but traveling has always been my escape hatch.
I can’t even remember why, when, and how I started traveling, to be honest. I just know that when I’ve learned how to drive when I was 15, I found myself driving to the beaches, mountains, and unexplored landmarks of Ilocos Norte just to stay there for a while and think about I don’t know what anymore. Probably life.
I was not traveling, though, I was wandering. You see, at 15, I knew I will never live in one place permanently.
I never knew what homesickness is. Maybe because there were more times I have attended [summer] camps, contests, and conferences than I have been in my grandmother’s house put together. Don’t get me wrong, but I was so used to not having my parents around when growing up that finding solace comes too easy for me. Weird though, because I was always the friendliest person in class, being the consistent class President and all. I was always surrounded by friends, but I also had my share of cravings for alone time in the early part of my life.
In elementary and high school, I was all over Ilocos region for academic and extra-curricular activities. I was an overachiever (people think I still am) that it cost me, for the better, my very first plane ride. It was a national contest in Naga City – and I can still vividly remember when I sat in the window side. Seeing the vast land below, I knew I wanted to see more.
That plane ride sparked a life-long curiosity and desire for me. Being the observer that I was, I learned that the mountains from above look more significantly rocky and barren. That the water from the sea remarkably flows to vast terrain, ending to where it came from, apparently. That the world is so big that the landscape to anywhere I look is different from where I am heading.
Since then, I have always wanted to seat in the window side.
My Ilocos journey extended nationally; I learned more about the world outside of my home province. Finally, at age 19, I went out of the country. Alone. For the first time. Hawaii is always a great idea, right?
I went there to present my undergraduate study but it was then and there that I realized that whatever we do, we are stuck in real life.
In my three-week stay in Hawaii, I saw how hard yet rewarding life is in there. It taught me that life can be very exhausting yet fulfilling as long as you work hard. Finally at 19, I’ve convinced myself that I don’t have to stay 5, 445 miles away from my immediate family just to live in a group of islands that could easily pass off the same as my motherland.
“Envy is never the answer. I would just work harder so when I get a job, I could go back again as a tourist,” I told myself.
I am working harder. Perhaps, I worked so hard that I landed a job that pretty much involved everything that I love doing – photography, writing, social media managing, volunteer work, and of course traveling.
It was during my travels in my first job that I discovered how people can be so fragile; that every person faces a different battle; and that even though you are in a very gloomy situation where it is inevitably a discouraging sight, you have to be optimistic and goal- driven.
It was in those community immersion that I have learned how to fight back tears and just smile for the sake of other people. I was aware that disaster sites can be very depressing but I wasn’t prepared for the people. Looking at the faces of actual children, women, and elders who suffered devastation maybe far more than anyone else in the world makes the despair and desolation look so much real.
Most of the dread come from trying to figure out how some people on my side of the world survive on the little money they make; which is too little to feed even a family of three. And here I am, spending most of my savings on plane tickets and hotel reservations. So I started volunteering when traveling.
Traveling to meet these people made me appreciate life even more because it is true that somewhere around the world, someone is wishing for the kind of life we live. That some people do not have the luxury to eat three times a day. That there are still children who need to wake up at three in the morning to get ready to go to school. These children would walk for three hours, and sometimes swim a river –having just purple yam or boiled potato as their food for the whole day– just to get to school.
Traveling taught me to never be afraid.
Never be afraid to smile to strangers because maybe, just maybe, it is just what they mostly needed. Never be afraid to humbly ask for directions because sometimes people can lead me to somewhere better. Never, ever, be afraid to show compassion because in continually desiring in traveling the world, I will always know how to understand other people’s actions and behaviors. Most importantly, never be afraid to travel alone.
In traveling alone, I enjoy the luxury of seeing how the sun beautifully sets and rises; how blue symbolically equates to tranquility; and how the mountains inevitably brings lasting peace.
In traveling, I have learned to love myself; escaping that constant depression in the long run.
I always wander when I need to escape loneliness that it made me so obsessed with others’ culture. It has been my passion to connect with the locals, anywhere I go, to learn more about theirs and share mine. I’m certain traveling made me a better global citizen.
I still have a wander-filled way of becoming my dreams. I always wander, and as other people say, the world is, and will always be, my classroom.
I travel despite not being rich because I know that I can always save for my trips. I still love taking the window seat when I fly; still have a love-hate relationship with taking buses to different places; and still long for every boat ride. I know how escaping life as is can be dreadful yet inspiring, time (and money) consuming but fulfilling, and tiring yet rewarding.
They say money is the issue but as long as you plan your trips and save in the long run, you never have to worry.
Neyziellewanders 