There was a time when I couldn’t wait for vacations. The thought of boarding a plane, of escaping somewhere new — the mountains, the sea, the streets of a foreign city — it filled me with a kind of aliveness. I would plan months in advance, daydream about the food, the views, the photos I’d take. Charging the batteries and lay out all the things I needed to bring.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted…it wasn’t even subtle.
It wasn’t that I lost interest in the world — it was that I began to see it everywhere. The sunrise outside my own window began to feel as vast as the horizon I once chased. The quiet of my morning coffee carried the same peace I sought in temples and beaches. The more I became present to what is, the less I needed to go elsewhere to feel alive.
What once filled me from the outside now wells up naturally from within.
When I walk through my neighborhood, I notice the same wonder that used to arrive only after a long flight: the texture of light, the laughter of strangers, the way the air moves through the trees. Everything is vivid, unrepeatable.
The need to find something has softened into the joy of being with what’s already here.
It’s not that I’ll never travel again. But when I do, it won’t be to escape — it’ll be to meet life in another form, another face of the same wholeness. The difference is, I no longer expect the world to complete me. I’m already home, wherever I stand.