When I was about to leave, I had a few moments of fear about what traveling was going to be like. Everything was going to be so strange and unknown.
Now its the other way around. I don’t really want to think about going home, because I’m afraid that life when I get back will be exactly the same. I fear that the same lifestyle, the same necessity to earn money, the same situation, the same cultures. I fear the familiar because I have changed. Or maybe I fear the familiar because I’m not sure I’ve changed enough.
Lucky I don’t have to come home anytime soon. ;-P
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Snap! I know these thoughts and feelings.
I’ve been thinking about this somewhat since you wrote, Andy, because when we were walking ‘el camino’ we too recognised a growing sense of fear of finishing. All those transformations that I thought would happen to me by walking across Spain, that clearly hadn’t happened, were dreams that had to be discarded. My biggest fear was that I would return to NZ just the same.
That was 3 years ago (almost to the day),and looking back I realise that the things that did change were on a deeper level than what others might see, and those new ways of being/knowing/living still remain, integrated in me. Mostly I don’t think of them now as a conscious awareness, but because they were lived experience they actually were transformative.
I reckon you’ll find that, too.