To The Girl Who Longs To Travel

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Ask any twentysomething girl what’s on her bucket list, and I guarantee you that one of the top five things she’ll list will be travel.

Wanderlust has spread at an unprecedented rate. Seeing exotic places and, if you’re really brave, going at it alone, has become the ultimate proof of your independence. Free and fearless, traveling to places far and wide proves you know how to live fully in the moment.

You don’t ask for a promotion or the nice apartment, you’ll take the chance to see the Northern Lights instead.

You scour the internet for flight deals out of the country instead of J. Crew’s latest sale.

Your girlfriends are all getting engaged and married and having babies, but you just bought a one-way flight to Dublin. Not sure when you’ll be back.

While other girls are pursuing diamond rings or making it into Forbes before they are thirty, you are sitting at the foot of the Grand Tetons in awe of the grandeur and immensity.

Travel lets you taste and see the world outside of your hometown and your office cubicle. There is a hole in your heart that only new places can fill. You’re in love with the cities you’ve not yet been too, and you’re already friends with the people you’ll meet someday.

To the girl with such a wanderlust, I urge you to be careful. While you’re exploring new places, don’t forget the old. As you seek adventure, remember the familiar.

I’ve moved 3-4 times in the last twelve months. After I’ve explored every nook and cranny of a new city, I almost always long for some of what I’ve left behind. There’s an ache to be known and understood that a new face won’t satisfy.

After you’ve seen a new place, it can become just another trip checked off the bucketlist.

When the delirious happiness that comes from getting lost in a beautiful place fades, you’ll want to share it with someone. Someone who already knows you.

Right next to the love of adventure in your gypsy soul, make sure that there is room for something slow and steady. Appreciate the rhythm that comes from ordinary life. Life is not just about the mountaintop experiences, it’s also about what’s in the valleys in between. And who you share the valleys with matters more than the mountaintops you visited alone.

When you look back ten or twenty years from now at all of your travels, it won’t matter so much how many times you moved in one year or how many countries you’ve visited. After a while, the memories become fuzzy and you won’t have anything left.

You’ll have snapshots of the sights you saw and the exotic foods you ate, but the people are permanent. Don’t forget.

Buy the plane ticket and climb those mountains, but cherish the people and don’t ever, ever take them for granted.