Wanderlust

All that is gold does not glitter;
Not all those who wander are lost
- JRR Tolkien

Although I first discovered this quote back in high school and found it pertinent to my situation at the time, I think that perhaps I didn't fully understand it until now.  The truth is that when I was a senior in high school, when I first read this, I wasn't wandering at all.  I was on a straight track to a four-year university with a plan, which I thought was flawless and perfect.  Only now, six years later, have I accepted my roll as a wanderer and realized just what that means and what a blessing it is to be so free that I can turn my life into an adventure.

I look around at so many of my friends; most are freshly graduated from a university.  We had the unfortunate luck of graduating at one of the worst times in the country's economic history.  It hasn't been this bad since the Great Depression.  As a result many people I know are forced to take menial jobs for slightly over minimum wage to avoid moving back in with their parents and some haven't even had that choice.  To me, it seems that there is no better time in one's life to wander than this, always remembering along the way that just because you wander doesn't mean that you're lost.

Academically oriented people can be completely single-minded sometimes.  Life goes like this: go to school, graduate, get a job, get a spouse, have kids and die.  That's really only six major events in your life, if you count your death as a major event.  How many people only want to have six things to look back on as they age and mentally peruse their past?  I suppose that's enough for some, but I want to have about a hundred. I want to look back on adventures, crazy people I've met and crazy places I've been.  I want to get to know the world better.  Most people barely know anything outside of the city they live in.  No wonder we're always destroying each other and our planet in the process.

I've never really been a spontaneous person until the last year or so of my life, but after discovering the joys of spontaneity I can't help but encourage others to leap without looking at least once in their life. Just get up and go somewhere!  Forget about what you think you should be doing, save up some money, buy a plane ticket and just GO.  Think about all the things you regret doing...now think about all the things you regret not doing.  Which list is bigger?