Back to the Future...

I've been home for 5 weeks now and I think the lag has finally worn off. It's always striking to me how bitter sweet the reunion with home becomes when you've moved every 3-5 days for 3 months. Part of you really likes coming back to the same places, with the same faces, the same smells, the same foods, the same social scenes, the same blanket comforts that so readily envelope you like you never left.

But then you hit the wall. The immediate assault of monotany is pontless to try to stop. The perceived loss of adventure and the return to everything that you remember with varying degrees of love and hate are almost as much of a shock as jumping into the freezing water of lake Geneva in early June. You welcome the adrenaline and the refreshing shock of having back the things you love, but somethings you could do without.

You would think that by this point in my life, there wouldn't be much of a change and these feelings would have disapated after having experienced them so many times. But no, they don't...and frankly, I like that they don't. Those feelings make you move in a different way. They are constant reminders about what else is out there. How many different people there are in the world and how they all move differently from you, yet you all seem to move in the same direction.

I remember when I was in college, I heard a man who I have the utmost respect for say that people are made for relationships. Not just in the romantic sense, but in all senses. Relationships with friends, co-workers, neighbors, random people you stand in line with at Bojangles or ride the bus/train with, everyone. At the base of everything, we are all after the same thing and that is the recognition and love of an other.

I think he was exactly right and that is probably the biggest lesson that these last few years have taught me. Whether it was bars in Paris, bonfires in Scotland, beaches in Nice, Chalets in Switzerland, getting to know amazing kids, trips in the US, or trains everywhere else, relationships were always formed and I've found over the years that some of those relationships, though formed in a few days or even hours, are stronger than some that I've had for years.

It's the combination of fatigue, anxiety about traveling, thrill of adventure, and, honestly, the fear of being alone that pushes you together so hard and with such force that a piece of them stays with you. A piece, which in my opinion, actually makes you change in a way you never expected or pushed you towards something that you were scared of, which in the end, turned out to be just what you needed.

Maybe the cure for all of this is to just keep traveling. Maybe the cure is to try to have the same perspective as when I'm on the road. Maybe if I can do that, then coming back can just be another adventure.

Here's to trying.

- pondhopper