why do we it?

Ahh traveling!!! It is such an obsession for me and my wife. Just the act of driving by an airport or seeing a plane fly by over head makes me want to grab my pack and go. If the world was right, I would have an unlimited credit card with do bill due and just wander the planet for as many years as I could. Don't know what the craving is. From the time I was born, my parents took me everywhere. I had already done 3 weeks in Italy by the time I was 12. For me I guess traveling from birth just made such an impression. Sometimes my wife hates me because I am never willing to spend money on anything except travel. But once she puts her pack on, she always admits that the time and effort and sometimes boredom from sitting around instead of going out is soooooo worth it. Once I hit foreign ground, I come alive, like something inside of me awakens, I love seeing the different cultures and ways of life. The time I spend abroad always changes me and after every trip, I am a different person in some way. Maybe thats what I love about travel so much. It always changes and opens my mind. I hope to be traveling as long as I can. I'm 33 and seem to be doing my best travels now. If I'm lucky, by the time I'm in my late thirties, maybe I'll be living my dream of living somewhere abroad. In the meantime, I keep traveling to find that perfect place. If only airfare was cheaper, life would be sweet!!!! :cheers:
 
This has been heavily on my mind lately. I think it's because now that I have the flight benefits of working for an airline I've been getting bored with it. Not bored thats the wrong word... how to describe my feelings... It's like I've got a sampler platter in front of me and none of it looks good....

In the end I still hold by what I wrote in my signature but for right now my life just feels weird....
 
I have no idea why I live my life. I don't think I have ever lived my life the way it was ment to be lived, as if my life ever had meaning and purpose. Not to say that I am not doing what I should be doing, but rather, whether or not there is something else I should be doing.

There is a sort of juxtaposition between the what we are doing and what we should be doing. There are many reasons for this. The one reason that comes to mind are the decisions others make for us. For example, parents want their children to live a certain way. They want them to chose between certain careers, go to certain schools, live a certain way. They want them to be what they always wanted to be. And it never works. Their children will never be happy. They designed their lives the way their lives were never ment to be.

We live in a culture of designed lives and we are consumers of junk. So many people want everything designed a certain way and clutter their lives with junk to cover up their unhappiness with the way everything has turned out. That is not the way to live.

The way to live is to do the right thing. Always do what is right. The existential question should be, what am I doing? Am I doing what I was ment to be doing? Am I living, working, searching, as I ought to be?

When you can answer that, you will know why you do what you do?
 
wow, I love the deep shit BigE. Minimilism (sp?) kinda the backpackers life while traveling-_-
 
I really should have posted this here rather than where I did...

Long post warning...

BigE wrote
I think the great majority of people who come here just need information for their trip, whether it is backpacking through Western Europe after they graduate from college or trying to find themselves in exotic locations. Many people are happy taking the trip of a lifetime and going back to their lives. Some of us want to keep doing it.
Click to expand...

Count me among them. I registered (under a name that I lost the password to) here this time last year. I just wanted to ask a few stupid questions of the travel pros here and get pumped for my life changing trip to Western Europe never planning to see this site again. I had this idea that while I could go back to Europe, I probably wouldn't for several years. Then it kinda hit me a few months ago, when work was becoming routine, that there is really nothing stopping me from going backpacking for two weeks (maybe timed to pick up a holiday). Flights are inexpensive, I am still a Youth for travel purposes, why not go back? I think I mistakenly thought going again would cheapen the original trip. Returning to Europe a month after I returned orginally (got an extension on starting work) cured me of that notion but opened up a whole other obsession: Where am I going next?

Wishing I was back in Spain, I decided to wander back. I did so mostly to relive some of that same excitement I had before I left, through the postings of people who had their journey ahead of them... and maybe pass on a little of what I learned.

As others have mentioned, the community here is wonderful and very welcoming. My forum browsing started out as a slight itch and now it is a full blown infection. I read travelpunk every morning and every night. I love getting ideas of places to travel based on stories and pictures from everyone. I follow people's blogs, and particularly enjoy reading other people's peceptions of the same cities I visited. But more than that, I enjoy seeing what people get from their trips. Planning is at least half the fun so I love researching a place, learning the language and pouring over hostel reviews. What is kind of weird, is I could not figure out quite why I wanted to travel?

For example, there are times I just want to walk around a city, with nothing in particular I want to see or do. I want to go to a grocery store in Bruges, get a loaf of bread and a coke and try out a simple phrase or two in Flemish, go to a bar with a newspaper and try to read it, or sit in a hostel common area and chat with people I just met. In other words I didn't have to see the Colloseum, the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben in order to have a successful day.

So what was it? It hit me a little later.

Traveling is an incredibly liberating experience. I remember sitting in a Florence hostel looking at a map of Italy and thinking... "Right now, I can do anything I want to do. I can see Rome, or I can see Venice. I can see the Alps or I can see Pompei. Munich? Why not? London, just a short flight away" I only had to answer to myself and that near boundryless freedom is a high unlike any other.

--Joey
 
my reasons

For me...(1)I travel because I'm curious and stubborn and want to know for myself, not because somebody told me it was so--I want to know what Rome smells like in December, I want to know what the sound of a jungle bird sounds like, I want to know what it is like to sleep in a French train, etc. In essence, I want to have memories that resonate and reverberate inside of me and not just imaginations. (2) I want to live those million lifetimes that someone talked about earlier in this lifetime because, truly, I don't know if I'll have any more after this. (3) I travel to prove to all the people around me that believe otherwise that people are people everywhere and that there is no reason to be afraid (4) I travel because there is nothing yet that fills me up like travel does--nothing--and sometimes I really wish that I could find something else so I could just be normal and with a purpose--but then, maybe this is my purpose....anyway, I just love to travel and got the bug BAAAADDDDD!!!!! :unsure:
 
1. i want to travel becuase there is so much more than the city we call home. ther is so much more than the artificial boundaries to our cites and countries.

2. i want to learn and inspire others, be inspired, motivated, challanged, and changed by the world - i think you can only progress so far by staying in one place, but those of us who choose to see the rest of the world learn so much more about so many different things.

3. i also want to travel as i beleive travellers will become a dying breed - the travel industry will grow a bit more but with increasing world tensions and conflict soon i beleive the world will go backwards and you wil not be so easy to travel about. take advantage of the oppurtunites this world offers you, for me it is freedom of travel so i choose this as a path for me to progress and transcend the "london mentality" of the world evolving around you. it doesnt, so get out there and see what is going on outside of the world your hometown provides for you.
 
Want to spend the life during traveling. If we came in this world then we should know about the world and should visit those amazing places before die. This world have really such amazing places which we can't imagine. i have another desire to visit the space but it is not possible for me due to shortage of money.:(
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I see everyone I know with their kids, jobs, cars, and money and I feel sorry for them because they are trapped with no idea that there is an entire world out there. I'm sitting on a beach in Thailand with a beer and watching the sunset wondering why the hell my friends would rather work in that job they hate till they die instead of this. You can always work and you can always go to school, but every year that passes takes you a little further from that backpacking trip and a little closer to, god forbid, a cruise.
 
it is funny, i have lived here for 4-5 years,
I have a lease on an apartment, I own antique furniture, and I haven't left the city in a while that any one knows of.

And a lot of people still ask me "where are you" or "what city are you in" when I answer the phone. It is funny to have ran up that kind of reputation. Once a punk, always a punk.

I do it to people watch in the airport or the bus station. You do it for food in strange places, and you do it because macdonald's is gross. You do it because no matter where you go, people tell you their life story.

Yes, you do it because unfamiliar ceilings are fine places to wake up, and even better places for sex.

you do it because your socks don't match, and you are wearing basket ball shorts for underwear

you do it because you don't mind asking directions, you notice, all our post say the same thing in different ways.
 
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