The Traveler's Pilgrimage

At the end of the day, there comes a point where every traveler's pilgrimage comes to an end. Every nomadic quest, every step, finds its way back home, to the place where it all began. The place where you once were, the place where you once existed before the entirety of the soul of the world reached out to pull you from a life that wasn’t authentically yours anymore.

I have spoken to many travelers—let me rephrase, backpackers—I guess I can now count myself into that category of folks. The ones that pack as much of themselves into a bag which fits snugly enough around the waist, leaning against our variety of spine lengths, shaping our postures, molding our nature and attitudes into the mantra that "anything can and will happen now, and I’m ready and open for that."

We are the type of travelers that usually have no schedule or agenda, except to discover and experience something more than what our previously everyday lives were showing us.

These aren’t planned vacations from life. They are informal invitations TO life, to the uncertainty of it all, the richness and fullness of diversified realities that exist outside of our normal routine existences.

The stories of most backpackers I met were each unique and inspiring. I’ll tell you that a lot of these people were some of the bravest people I had met, yet also, like me, were/still are searching for something. Each person, no matter the story, seemed to be on their own quest. They embodied that of a pilgrim in their individual rights, though the same slight confusion in their giant hearts still resonated with my sometimes ever-present confusion, which I believe most people in the world, regardless of whether they are settled or not, will always slightly feel.

We will never have it all figured out.

I believe most backpackers are seeking a delicious kind of nourishment, which if you're not too careful can always leave you yearning for more of that earthly, culturally sort of attachment, that you somehow feel you can't seem to grasp when you come back home to a different type of reality.

Yet it's not only this nourishment that backpackers seek that make their pilgrimage vital enough to walk away from their families, jobs, the 9 to 5 grind, the money, the comfort zone, the already existing friend circle, maybe even a budding career, on the forefront of fame in their own field of expertise. No. It's more severe than nourishment. It's more pressing than a notion to fill or to run away.

It's the absolute, beautiful desire to become one with self out in the world.

Sometimes, the truth is that you cannot find the completed pathway to the extraordinary soul that resides inside of yourself by being confined to the four walls of a therapist's office. THOUGH, I will not discount therapy because, from my own tedious experience, it was a gateway to uncovering years and years of buried toxic waste that was destroying me from the inside out.

Traveling cannot cure these ailments unless you are feverishly aware of your own demons and shower them with love and understanding. Simply put, you cannot run away from your own life and expect to be happier somewhere else. It will all follow you. Yet these are some of the most profound and greatest lessons I learned on my pilgrimage towards self-realization.

The big joke, however, is that we have been continuously on a pilgrimage towards this self-realization, self-identification, self-love, self-nourishment, self-appreciation.

Life is the grandest adventure of all time. The world is ours for the taking, a bloomed flower waiting for all its billions of busy bees to come and taste its sweet nectar.

The backpacker's soul is that to be cherished. Some of society may turn their noses up to those who have wandered away from a conventional norm that seems to suffocate most of our souls, or maybe more like numb our senses to the possibility of magic that holds a place for each of our beating hearts.

There is a backpacker's heart in us all. There are parts of ourselves that are dying to step into the shoes of an explorer, an eternal hunger to come to know who we really are through the eyes of others unlike us. We long to fulfill our purpose, our destinies.

Many backpackers I came across were trying to do just that. To find their purpose after leaving a life they had curated for themselves, that no longer suited their souls need. Talk about confusing, but what a beautiful way to be confused, as you redefine the aspects of your life, as you redefine yourself, sprinkled with lessons out in the great beyond.

I made friends who had been traveling for years. You could tell that after these years away from home, their quests all led to the same sort of conclusion... back home, to now create their own home. The tiredness that follows you as you move from place to place, couch to couch, hostel to hostel, train to train, buses to planes, continually learning to connect with others and then let go of them, usually being on your own as a solo traveler, learning to deal with your oneness and being okay with that.

This is the point at which the backpacker knows that stability must come into play somehow. And this, for a lot of us, is the scariest part. The return. This is the part that most backpackers don't talk about a lot. The completion of their pilgrimage and forging their way to the common ground.

What will I now contribute to this world that has taken me into its arms and shown me the most undeniable, unconditional love? What do I do? How will I do it? Who will I now become?

I had a friend who was terrified to go home. He had done this before. He had traveled and found that version of himself that he adored, but was never able to hold onto it when he returned home.

"I don't want to slip back into my old life. I'm so scared I will. I'm scared I will just work, that I won't make time to do anything for myself, that I won't do something spontaneous every now and again and have some fun. I'm just not the same person as I am now when I go home."

I didn't understand this since I was still on my quest. In my mind, I thought that going home with so much wealth of knowledge, so much nourishment, so much change within your soul, would propel you into a different way of looking at your previous reality. That it would be a piece of cake to fit back into a western way of living.

But it's not.

And this is the part that backpackers don't voice. Maybe because we feel shame or embarrassment about coming back home and feeling so torn away from the soul of the world when in reality, that soul never leaves us just because we take a plane to our hometowns. It continuously resides within us.

It's taken me four months to get used to being where I am now. I found myself feeling absolutely crazy, even bonkers for feeling so out-of-place, coming back to America. Yet I was reassured that I was not. Another friend of mine had encouraged me that this sensation and reaction of crying some days was normal.

"I would find myself being around old friends and not being able to relate to anything they were talking about. I loved them dearly, but I didn't fit into this life anymore. I couldn't find my place. Sometimes in social settings, I would remove myself from people and go and cry."

Even months after separating from my fateful 8 crew in Nepal, a text message from one of them wrote:

"I'm sorry I haven't been responding lately, it's just been so overwhelming being home again."

I have been trying to investigate within myself those very feelings. What are they and why do most backpackers experience this coming home. I have two amazing parents and an incredible dog, yet why has it all the same been hard to adjust after ending such a life-changing pilgrimage?

I have come to some sort of conclusion that one, coming home makes you feel that you have lost some kind of gargantuan independence and self-identity you very much gain when it's just you, your backpack, and the world, with nobody else to rely on but yourself, and two, the most significant conclusion: there lie two realities.

The reality that exists at home, wherever that may be for you, and the reality that exists when you travel. Both are in their equal rights reality. Both realities offer magic in their own way, and both realities provide suffering. Yet they are separate as if you are passing from one dimension to another. People in home's reality can never fathom the things you have experienced in another dimension... UNTIL THEY EXPERIENCE IT FOR THEMSELVES. Therefore we can never condemn or make comparisons, judgments towards the interactions we may face with loved ones and vice versa. WE SHOULD NEVER MAKE JUDGMENTS, PERIOD.

As backpackers coming home from a long journey, you carry so much inexplicable life material with you. You carry not only the bag you left with that is filled with more than you took, but you also carry everyone you met along your pilgrimage because each moment or person was a homecoming towards your self-realization. You bring with you treasures of the world that do not resemble that of a dollar bill, or a promotion, or a TV guest star credit on IMDB. You carry things that socially DO NOT make sense to others, because they can't see a tangible worth.

And you can't see it either... it's hard for backpackers to see it when they come home because of their certain societies that may be more focused on material achievement and career success. You start to question if your pilgrimage really happened at all.

Did I really learn about myself? Did I really climb that mountain? How come I feel so defeated around all my successful friends, who are "way" ahead of me? How was I so courageous out in the world and feel so fearful about everything now?

This is the reality of home. You come back to a place where you will face next level questions in your life, issues and images you did not encounter on your travels. Let's be honest. No solo backpacker is concerned with most of these home realities when they travel. That's the point. It's to realize that these little things most will worry of back home are not the end all and be all of LIFE. They are not the secret to real happiness. But only backpackers end up realizing that and every person will either come to that realization OR they won't and may lead incredibly happy lives in their own rights, and my hat goes off to them.

Everyone deserves to be happy.

For myself, after being all over the world for almost two years and leaving one reality for the other, I am back in now. It is challenging. And it's not because I have spent two years "running away" from "real life." It's challenging because I have gained more life in me than I could ever imagine and I feel separated from it when I'm home.

Not because of my parents. Not because of my dog. Not even because of my friends.

These things we experience internally is never about anyone else. It's never about a place or location, though it's always easier to blame other circumstances around us.

It's me.

It's the automatic pressure I feel in home reality to become SOMETHING.

"I've got to be successful now. I've got to, I've got to, I've got to."

I see the images of the west and I buy into them, forgetting that I don't have to buy into this image that I'm not enough.

I am something. With or without a title.

We are all already a success because we have a soul and can breathe.

The fear of starting this next chapter is terrifying. I'm sure for a lot of backpackers it is like that. It's taking those treasures we found on our grand pilgrimages and sharing it in our home realities however we can and not faulting people who can't fathom our symbolic riches.

For myself, it is becoming the artist I know I can be. But how do I want to do that now? How do I want to create my life now? I know I have changed and I know I cannot fit back into the shoes I left at home. I know that I miss the world every day, yet that feeling disappoints me because I AM in the world right now, yet somehow I can't connect the same magic I felt in world reality to home reality… YET…

I think this is normal.

And all the more, to my dear backpackers out there, you worldly travelers, who have found their way home and are now entering the stages of figuring out what personal gifts they would like to contribute to the world…

Congratulations.

You took the most significant risk of your life. And I know, without knowing YOU, it paid off in the end. Your pilgrimage has led you down a path towards yourself. Closer and closer you are getting to know who you actually are and now you have come back to where it all began, maybe like me, or some of the friends I mentioned up above.

Or maybe you have come home and realized that the burn and desire to keep seeking still resides within you. Listen to that calling, yet always make sure it is a calling to continue exploring, not fear pushing you to run away from your "soul's" responsibility to contribute your unique gifts to the world.

You are brave. You are even more heroic for realizing that you had to take a step back down to home's reality for your integration period. This is where magic can happen because the magic you felt out there is always with you.

I have to remind myself about that magic every day.

It's okay.

You might feel scared, maybe even more confused than when you left home. You may also feel like an alien in this reality. It's okay.

Somehow the pieces of your new puzzle will come together. You will integrate at your own pace, which many won't understand, and eventually, a new path will form. The next quest. The ever existing pilgrimage, beckoning you, to step out of your comfort zone once again. It might lead back into another worldly dimension, or it could be a path that takes you somewhere around your homeland.

If the world gave me my life back, then my next quest, my next pilgrimage is to give something back to this magnificent earth and the people who make up its glorious humanity.

I will lean back into these artistic qualities. I will share my humanity. I vow to create some kind of change with my art form, even if it touches just one person. I will learn to be the courageous actress again, with the balance of the adult and the child, to be empty of ego in our sometimes modern ego-full industry. Armed with the wealth of knowledge I have gained from being a solo backpacker, I will forge my own path, knowing that I have changed, knowing that I can face whatever challenges lie ahead.

My promise here to you, dear reader, is that I will utilize the fullness of my own unique artistic power.

And I want you to know that I’m just as scared to do it now than ever before.

Wherever your pilgrimage takes you next, know that you'll always have a backpacker's soul. You'll always carry your treasures with you, whatever decisions you decide to make. All the roads you take will lead you to where you want to go in the end.

You'll never forget the lessons you learned and yes, you are better because of them and you have changed. We are always changing.

Go forth and know that whichever reality you reside in or chose to live your life in, the world will always have your back. Your pilgrimage will always yearn to lead you back towards yourself.

Your true home.