The Beginning.....

“Wanderlust” noun: strong desire or impulse to travel.

I remember when I learned the word “wanderlust.” I was in the 7th grade and it was a vocabulary word. I’d never heard such a word before. I lit up and thought “I have that!” I immediately loved the word. It sounded grown up and sexy, mostly because part of the word was actually “lust.” I wanted to see the world, I lusted to see the world. But I didn’t want to just visit the tourist attractions; I want to live them. I want to become a local of as much of the globe as I can; a global citizen if you will. When you visit a place as a tourist it is a special experience but I always feel like an outsider. Like the people who lived there knew something special and secret and would only share it with me if I lived there. Tourist attractions. We must see them. They are attractions for a reason. Some of them are ancient and wonderful historical sites, some are novelties but interesting nonetheless and some are just plain cheesy. But the nuances of life on the ground is something else all together. You can’t see it, feel it, smell it, or really know it without putting in the time of living it.

So we've moved around a lot. The uprooting has it’s costs that many aren’t willing to bare. We must leave family, leave friends, make new friends, find new schools, find new groceries stores and find new foods of to eat. We miss birthdays, births, illnesses, deaths, anniversaries, holidays, and just being there while children grow. We miss participating in some people's lives because we are participating in the lives of new people. We need to change our wardrobes, ours shoes, the cars we drive and our driving habits. We purge our belongings every few years; sometimes later realizing we got rid of something we wish we hadn’t. Some need the security of constancy in their lives. I need the security of change. The constant challenge of being forced outside my comfort zone just to get through my days is an exciting security to me. The new friends bring new experiences, flavors, cultures and languages or accents. This was true for all moves I’ve had no matter the destination. Learning to “Bless her heart” in the Southeastern US was as new to this Jersey Girl as learning to say “Dzien Dobry” in Warsaw The new friends bring wonderful experiences and challenges to my daily life. We get one walk on this earth and I literally don’t want to walk the same path everyday.

It is hard for some to grasp this as a “need.” It was hard for me to understand it as a need in myself. When I was a newly emerging adult I tried very hard to fit into the mold I thought my family wanted for me. Grow up, get married, buy a house as close to them as possible, put them first. It wasn’t until almost ruining a perfectly good marriage that I realized that that was not good for me, my husband, or my family. That was also not what my extended family actually wanted for me. Yes they wanted me close to participate in life with them but they wanted me happy too. When we started inching away by moving one hour away I really didn’t get the flack I imagined I would get. The truth was they kind of always expected I’d do something a little different. It just goes to show you that sometimes our perception of peoples expectations of us and their actual expectations can be vastly different.

My family has always been happy to visit our new destination even though I’ve missed their milestones and continue to do so. With all the social media these days it’s easier than ever to stay tapped into their lives. So I send my wanderlust out into the blogosphere as another way to connect with the people I love.