That Insta Ramble That Probably Should’ve Been a Blahrg Post Instead
8-year old Mehdi would spend way too much time spinning an old, outdated brown globe in his room. Like the ones that are still marked with USSR and West Germany. Most countries on the globe were memorized by 9, and favorites were picked by 10. As an only child I came to find my favorite mind-game: spinning globes faster and faster and stopping it with a swift flick of a pencil-butt to declare the next country I want to visit. In a single afternoon I would travel to the blue waters of the Austrian Danube to the brown plains in Nebraska to the lush-green Brazilian Amazon until I land at my destination in the golden North African Sahara. New exotic names every single time I played. Years later these memories were repressed, perhaps out of embarrassment from being an only child and having to invent my own games.
But the memories started to splash back to me on an early morning barefooted stroll on the rocky beaches near Athens in November 2014, a month before I see graduation caps as well as full independence and water/sewage bills. It may have had to do with being alone during the sunrise above the crystal-clear Mediterranean in a country very foreign to me. Pretty sure the pencil-butt had taken me there before.
On that Greek beach, at 22, I still kinda wanted to go to all those places I discovered in the globe at 8. "Yeah, probably not reasonable to go to all of them, so long I try to go to some every once in a while." Though its not like I ever wanted stupidly-lavish trips by blowing out money like I'm a Wall St Wolf. A backpack (or 3...) and couch-surfing does the job to zigzag through both the world's cities and her nature.
Initially, this wasn't some deep, intricate urge to travel. In hindsight it was shallow. I just wanted to get out of my daily routines and environment to "find myself" or something like that. Very "Alchemist"-cliche and I'm afraid a bit too "Eat, Pray, Love"-pretentious. The deeper things came about later, and if anything has been true it's that the insights will grow deeper with each new experience.
Back to the beginnings: the purpose of going somewhere new was to eliminate all external influences from my daily routines to see how I'd react to the new environment and how I'd feel about my life back home. The new place would provide new perspectives and new questions to ask about life. Help me take lessons from the past and review dreams for the future, so to speak.
Which is fine.... But only halfway to the truth. What I soon found out is the person I am on the streets of Manhattan is not the same exact person as who I am on the beaches of California, who in turn is not the same person I am in the office-room.
The more I hit the road, the more I question who I am, the more I lose track of who I am. But that's a good thing. It's not an identity crisis. It's a confidence-brewing self-awareness. I once read the following,
"Uncertainty breeds skepticism, which breeds openness, which breeds non-judgment."
At some point of questioning everything, you just let go and observe.