Wanderlust

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give, to roam the roads of remote lands, to travel is to live.” Hans Christian Andersen

What's one thing you buy that actually makes you richer? Travel.

Whether it takes the form of a long road trip, a relaxing cruise, or flying across borders, the anticipation of embarking on an exciting adventure is priceless.

Traveling is often a humbling experience. It helps to unwind and disconnect because traveling shuffles our surroundings and pushes us out of old comfort zones. To wake up in places we are unfamiliar with, to experience cultures we only read about, or to have conversations in languages we don’t fully understand.

But perhaps the best thing about traveling are the moments of awe that it often provides — of the type that can barely be translated into words. I recall that time I swum under the Santa Bárbara (Goiás) waterfall and felt the true scale of nature; or the first time I witnessed the organized chaos of Tokyo and felt the culture of respect embedded in Japanese society; or that time I ate pig feet in an open field in Taiwan and had a glimpse at the lives my ancestors once lived.

Each of these memories — and many others — were eye-opening events that I would never have been able to fully understand without experiencing them first handed.

This all widens perspectives and is an incentive to be adventurous and to enjoy life away from our ordinary pleasures and comforts. A traveler’s mind is open to new experiences, awakens to other realities, and expands itself.

And as cliche as it sounds, a traveler at heart is someone who learns to search for better questions and feels entirely fine setting aside old answers.

As the world slowly opens up and returns to what seems to be — hopefully 🙏 — normality, I invite you to reminisce about your past travels, and look forward to exploring future destinations with an open mind and heart.

In the meantime, try playing around with Google Maps! If you can't bother, I'll leave you with some pictures from my last trip to Japan :)