I’ll be 32 this coming Fall and I’ve basically been traveling my whole life.  Starting with growing up overseas in the Middle East, then doing a lot of trips to Korea for work when I started my career and now traveling regularly with Nick, experiencing as much of the world as we can, travel has always been a constant for me.  For me, there is absolutely nothing in the world that gives me the sensation that traveling does: that rush of curiosity, the sense of being completely in a different place, pulled out of my comfort zone, new languages, new scents, new scenes, new people.  Travel has a way of curing any ailment that might possess me at any point in time, it harnesses the wildness inside of me, it completely captures my emotions and makes me a better person with each moment that passes.

All of us have to find in our lives that thing that centers us, that thing that makes us better, that thing that makes us the best version of ourselves.  And I think a lot of us struggle with that and it takes a long time to find something that truly makes you feel whole, that brings out the humanity within us, that just makes your soul feel free.  In essence, that thing that makes you feel that way, is for our mental health, it’s what makes us, us and keeps us healthy and happy.  It’s what keeps us on track and what pushes us further.  For me, travel is a mental health exercise, it’s something that keeps my soul healthy and that pushes my mind to learn more.  It forces me to grow and change and exist beyond just the daily grind – and that is what still drive me to travel and why it always will.

The world is becoming increasingly heavy – we’re all worn down, we’re exhausted, we’re too busy, we’re always “on,” and sometimes that just takes too much of a toll on our mental health, on our existence.  Sometimes, we need to remember what the world was like before we all spent all day on cell phones, sometimes we need to remember what it’s like to not understand anything someone says to you but to laugh with them all the same, sometimes we need to remember that we’re all more alike than different, sometimes we need to remember how it feels to just sit and watch the sun set, sometimes we just need to take a moment to remember that work and family and responsibilities can be paused, that the moments we spend truly taking in a moment are still worth it.  That’s what travel brings to the table for me, a way to stop and take in the moment, to watch the sun set over the Seine in Paris and not think of anything else going in the world.  Those moments that only travel can offer sometimes are what still drive me to chase them, to spend my time and my hard earned money to follow moments around the world for as long as I possibly can.  Because at the end of day, travel for me isn’t how many sites I see, it’s not checking things off of a list – for me, travel is how many moments it offers me, how many experiences it opens up, and how many ways it changes me to my core.