There was a phase in our lives when travelling was our lifeline. It was rare and almost unheard of to go more than a month without fitting a trip in it. The time in between trips would be spent planning out destinations for the next one. The standing joke among our friends was that we could probably give up on our lease and instead rent from AirBnb for the short time period that we spent at ‘home’.
A few years ago Aadya was born. And a little later, she received a medical diagnosis that disrupted our whole lives. More importantly, when Aadya started to become her own person, it became very clear that she’d rather spend hours reading or playing silly games at home than go out. Give her a choice between going to a park or a library and she’d pick library – every single time. So we hung up our travel boots – without any reluctance. There was something so much more important in our lives and giving up what was once so central to it did not feel like a concession at the time.
A strange thing happened once we gave up on traveling though. We found pockets of time in our lives that we still wanted to fill with the outside world. So we started exploring the world right outside our window. We put together a vegetable and flower garden. And as any gardener can tell you, gardens grow best when the gardener stays put – to water and weed, to tend and prune and most of all to watch. Soon watching a garden grow from mere seeds felt just as magical as hiking in Malaysia to find a hidden waterfall.
I personally remember moments of complete zen in some of our trips – sometimes at the beach, sometimes by a river and once memorably in a tuk-tuk. Moments of clarity where the moment alone was enough. Over a year ago I started exploring our neighborhood trails and walks. At first a little nervous about claiming to be a runner but then embracing the label. I rediscovered the zen moments, this time in my own neighborhood. I found it in the rhythm of my feet hitting the trails, in the joys of unexpected thunderstorms and trees dancing to the music of the wind, in the shared smiles and high-fives with strangers.
All of this to say that the only thing you need to feel the magic of travel and exploration is the ability to wander and wonder. A plane ticket to a destination half-way across the world is definitely helpful – but its not a pre-requisite. There are as many sunrises and sunsets in my little corner of the world as there are in Hawaii. And while someday, another sunset on the beaches of Hawaii would be amazing to witness, for today, the sun is playing hide-and-seek from behind the grey rain clouds out here – and that is enough.