I’ve just gotten home from road tripping across the country with two of my best friends and I don’t want to feed you some over done story about how we should travel to find ourselves.
I do want to try to blog because I feel as though I’m brimming over with words and I absolutely love to write and I’d love for you to join me on this embarrassingly eager (and admittedly amateur) venture. SO, without further bullshitting ado:
My best friend Kris and I drove with our good friend Aly from Sarasota, Florida to her home of Keystone, Colorado to help move her home. Traveling with my friend Aly has forever changed my view of the world. This girl has been everywhere and done most everything and all with a humility and lack of pretention that I envy.
On the beginning of our trip I asked Aly if there was one thing she had learned from all of her travels, one theme, what would it be? Without needing much contemplation at all she responded, “It will sound cliché, but – everywhere you go, there is love.”
Now, that pill didn’t taste too good goin’ down for me. I do think the word love is over used and cliché. Being in such close proximity with Aly and my friend Kris for five days melted that personal pretention down to a pathetic puddle that has since evaporated.
Love is awesome.
We stayed with strangers, went to dive bars, fed chipmunks?!, got lost, got road rage, yelled at Siri, took road sign pictures, got slap happy, helped people move, went hiking, were incessantly hit on by men who had apparently never seen three girls together before, snuggled Amaya(Aly’s dog), yelled at Amaya…the list could go on and on and these past five days have felt like a month and a day at the same time but let me tell you one thing:
Traveling is not about finding yourself. You’ve had yourself your whole life and you will be there for the rest of your life. Don’t waste your time trying to find yourself – we get in our own way far too often.
It is about finding others.
My cold cynicism, lack of patience, and self-centeredness melted in the face of Aly’s warm open-heart style of living and loving others. I am so so humbled that Aly and Kris wanted to spend 33 hours in a car with my hangry self (I am the self-proclaimed Back Seat Monster) and I want everyone to save a couple hundred bucks and take off somewhere with their best friends.
We haven’t been apart for 24 hours and I miss her already, and Aly’s right. It’s a cliché for a reason: everywhere you go, there is love. You just have to go.