Wanderlust

I've always felt different because I've never wanted to just stay put and put down "roots" somewhere.  I feel like there are so many things I want to do, learn, explore, and figure out before I just settle down forever.

I'm reading a book called Wanderlust right now.  It's a memoir by Elisabeth Eaves--someone I'd never heard before--and her almost biological need to travel.  I feel like I'm getting together with an old friend when I read it, because it's so much like me (so far). 

She describes the word wanderlust as, "the very strong or irresistible impulse to travel...Wanderlust is not a passion for travel exactly; it's something more animal and more fickle--something more like lust"  That had me hooked right there.  I finally found a word for my...reason for being different from those where I grew up.  She goes on to quote other people, which I am going to use here:

      "Anatole Broyard (I have no idea who that is) put it perfectly in his essay, "Being There": 'Travel is like adultery:  one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country.  To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live...in our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.'"

     Former U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, cautioned his nephew against roaming, saying, "Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy.  When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country, but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret--their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects, and they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home."

Now, I don't want to sit here all but plagarizing someone else's thoughts and rewriting what other people have already written; but it's been really gratifying to be able to put my feelings of wanderlust into words for once--even if it takes someone else's words to do it.

While this life is so much fun and so very fulfilling in many ways, it does have its drawbacks.  It is very hard to to stay close and/or get close to people.  I mean, not only are you just going to pick up and leave those friends you hopefully (finally) make every two to three years and never come back; but your short vacations home are never long enough to really get to know your family and friends all over again.  I find it hard identifying with them, and I know for a fact that they find it hard identifying with me. 

See, when you live this life and work for the government and all that entails, you live a public life in a sense.  You always have to be on guard.  Once you've built that very necessary wall up, it's pretty much impossible to let it fall back down.  We can never let loose.  We can't go out in public and around people we don't know and discuss our political views out in the open or get falling down drunk (outside of the U.S.).  We can't just bust loose in a foreign country.  That is a lot of pressure and often a serious inconvenience.  But it's the life we've chosen and--finally--gotten used to living.

My longest, dearest friend from back home told me on my last trip home that I absolutely cannot identify with other adults anymore.  The sad thing is, she's right.  And, becuase of that, I often wonder if quenching this thirst, this "wanderlust" is really going to make me/us happy in the end. But, for now, it's all I know.  For now, it's worth it.