I will never understand how my older sister could wake up one morning and announce out of the blue she was going to travel to a destination I didn’t know existed until she mentioned it.
“She’s an adventurer,” I’ll always say with a shrug when someone asked where my sister was when she was on one of her many adventures, but I didn’t understand it one bit.
How could you wake up and decide to leave the comfort of your abode, brave rugged and unfamiliar paths, spend days in the company of strangers and get pleasure from it all? It didn’t make sense to me.
So, I picked the day after my bubbly sister rolled her way back home with skin looking darker than I remembered after a travel adventure to find some answers, and it turned out to be a day I’ll never forget. She gave me three reasons why I choose to seek a world outside of what I call home.
“Each friend represents a world in us,
a world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
– Anais Nin
My sister told the best stories and gave the best advice. I never thought much about it, but I walked around with the feeling that there wasn’t much my sister didn’t know. Holding a conversation with her was one of my favourite activities. The crown on it all was how understanding she was. It seemed almost unnatural.
She told me on that day that while on her adventures, she had lost count of the number of people she had spoken with. She had lost count of the number of cultural knowledge she grasped through communicating with strangers.
She had learned the power behind an open mind and how to live life to the fullest. She became her best self through years spent mixing with people of different and similar perspectives from hers and eating cuisines she never would have imagined. She lived life through every person she met.
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive,
but in finding something to live for.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My sister had her life figured out early on. She knew what she wanted and seemed to get new inspiration on how to accomplish her set targets. It made me feel like I was the drifter between the both of us when I was the one with feet deeply rooted at home.
She told me that on her first trip ever, she sat next to a mother with two children. They had forged a bond through shared tales, laughter, and experience. She knew after the encounter she wanted to own her own Daycare Center someday. She wanted to watch life grow, and that is what she does today. You never know the parts of yourself hidden till you unveil them.
“Perhaps home is not a place,
but simply an irrevocable condition,”
-James Baldwin
The house always felt brighter when my sister walked in, always clutching her backpack with a trinket I knew she had picked up for me waiting impatiently to be ripped from its wrapper.
I knew she felt the same way I did because she would stare at me at random points in time like I was a shiny toy she had just got. She would pause midway in one of her intriguing tales to gasp out how much she had missed something – like the chipped tile in the kitchen she always stubbed her toe on.
I knew she had the best days of her life when she wasn’t home, and she missed being with us at the same time. I had come to learn as well that travel made the heart fonder, kept memories engraved longer, and brought happiness at every turn.
While my sister and I planned a backpacking trip, debating on how to save cash to fulfill a travel dream set for later that year, I knew we would be back before the holidays. Because there are no holidays like the kind you spend at home especially after being reminded of how precious it is.
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