There’s a scene in Eat Pray Love when Liz is in Italy visiting the Augusteum. She explains the origin of these ancient ruins and talks about how the city has built itself above it over time. In a message to David, she says –

“Then I looked around in this place, at the chaos it endured. The way it’s been adapted, burned, pillaged, and then found a way to build itself back up again, and I was reassured. Maybe my life hasn’t been so chaotic. It’s just the world that is, and the only real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation…the Augusteum showed me that we must always be prepared for endless waves of transformation.”

It’s one of the simplest things, sitting in what she considers the “quietest and loneliest” part of Rome. But that brief experience had an impact on the way she started to see things. It was a pivotal moment in finally letting go of the relationship she had with David. It didn’t make the experience - the heartbreak - any less painful but it allowed her to take the first step to move forward. This is the beauty, and the privilege, of travel. It takes us outside our routines and self-imposed bubbles where nothing changes and opens our eyes to looking at life differently. This world is so much bigger than the next promotion or moving in with a partner. If we allow ourselves to look outside the world we limit ourselves to, there’s so much more to be discovered about ourselves, the people in our lives, the challenges we’re working through, and the people around us.

Travel wasn’t something I fully experienced until adulthood. My family only took two trips while growing up and they were coincidentally in the same summer. Regardless, I was always fascinated by other places. Naturally curious, I soaked up everything I could from books, movies, and TV shows. New York City was romanticized through old black-and-white films and the gem of 90s romcoms (You’ve Got Mail, anyone?). I imagined Europe frozen in time and considered tropical islands the ultimate luxury. I dreamed of what it would be like to live anywhere but the town I was painstakingly familiar with. A town that felt frozen in its own way, where nothing ever changed and the people were nauseatingly predictable.

There would be occasional day trips to the Indiana dunes and Wisconsin Dells—countless trips into downtown Chicago where life as a city girl was a star-studded dream. Then I became that girl, and it still wasn’t enough. I’ve always had this restless, buzzy feeling inside of me. As a kid, it would often come out when I was bored, stressed, or felt out of control of what was happening around me. I settled the buzzing by rearranging my bedroom – the one thing I could do something about. As an adult, I still have this same habit. I rearrange furniture far more often than I’d care to admit.

I discovered travel for the first time during the summer going into my senior year of college. I was headed off to study abroad in Paris - a city I settled on after no great options worked out for Italy, my first choice. There was already this chip on my shoulder since it wasn’t where I really wanted to go, and my ego felt particularly large since I had gone to school in a big city. Needless to say, culture shock came in the form of an ego check. No one cared who I was or where I was from. So what, you’re from Chicago? This is Paris! And if you’ve ever truly experienced Parisian culture, you understand that they believe there is no place better than this city - and I’m inclined to agree. The national pride in France is already something to admire, but the pride of being Parisian is on another level.

A few years later, I started to travel independently, and one of my first solo trips was to Boston. I had never been to the East Coast but always had this strong pull toward it. Most of the colleges I dreamed of were located in New England, but practicality won that debate, and I stayed in-state. Stepping foot in Boston was like stepping into my full self for the first time since I left Paris. History was bleeding out of the streets as if there were only a thin veil between the past and present. I was in love and quickly became an addict.

The restlessness I had become used to didn’t appear as often once I started to take regular trips, and there wasn’t an impulse to rearrange furniture as much as before. It turns out travel indulged my curiosity and sparked my imagination, which pulled me out of rigid routines that form when I’m in the same place for too long. The pandemic was a forced grounding to my restless spirit that I dealt with in the only way I knew how – I rearranged furniture practically every other month.

I missed the exhilaration of getting on a plane and seeing the world from thousands of feet in the air. I missed walking down historic streets trying to catch a glimpse of moments hundreds of years in the past. I longed for days when I could walk around aimlessly somewhere unfamiliar and let my imagination wander. To sit in a coffee shop and watch the people walk by and imagine what their lives are like – how different they must be compared to mine – or pretend I’m a local. Stepping on a plane again for the first time was like stepping back into my whole self. The buzzing at that point was unable to be ignored. I felt it in every fiber of my being, from fingers to toes, and I was anxious to get back into the world.

I have had some of the clearest thoughts and realizations because of travel and have grown so much through experiences away from home. It’s also given me the chance to meet some of the most interesting people. Travel has seen me through some of life's best and worst moments. I’ve experienced grief, fear, joy, accomplishment, and inspiration. It’s pushed me out of my introverted shell and forced me to be uncomfortable in the best way possible. I haven’t loved every place I’ve visited, but I don’t regret any of them. So much of my character and the growth I’ve gone through is a result of exploring new places.

I am lucky to have experienced many moments similar to Liz in the Augusteum – where an otherwise insignificant moment becomes overflowing with meaning. The first was sitting along the Seine on a quiet night in Paris, not long before I would head home. Friends and I were having a picnic dinner across the water from Notre Dame. We sat in silence for a good portion of the time, looking at the water, the people around us, or at nothing at all. In that moment, I was overcome with such a profound sense of contentment, something I’d never experienced before. Everything felt right. I felt at home, at peace. Like I had found the place I belonged. I can hear the bells from the Cathedral and the noise of traffic from the streets above us. Distant soft conversations of people enjoying a similar evening, and if I close my eyes and fall far enough into the memory, I swear I can even smell the city and taste the wine.

I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. Always looking for moments of peace and contentment, being purely happy in the moment. There’s often something going on in the everyday that prevents us from truly stopping and enjoying a moment for what it has to offer. It wasn’t that I belonged in Paris – I don’t believe we belong in any one location. We might have a preference of where we like to spend our time and set down roots but the feelings that I experienced can be found anywhere if we’re willing to look for them.

Travel pulls us out of our own heads. We’re forced to focus on things we take for granted or don’t think twice about any other day. What route do you take to walk to your favorite coffee shop or get to work? Is it the same every time? If you’re headed somewhere new, are you paying attention to how you get there? When we take a trip, we actively take in what’s around us. I was recently in New York City, and it astonished me how much I was fascinated by the buildings. I stopped to take photos of vines crawling up brownstones and old business signs fused into walls. I couldn’t tell you the last time I walked somewhere in my home city and looked around simply out of curiosity. Lake Michigan is a 15-minute bus ride from my apartment. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been to the lakefront in the last five years. On a recent trip to Michigan, you would have thought I was seeing a large body of water for the first time the way I was excited about being at the beach.

We are too consumed with day-to-day life to live the same way we do while traveling. Should we practice what is essentially mindfulness at home more often? Absolutely. But the reality is that life gets in the way. Whether it’s family or work or something else…all of these things take up space in our minds, and sometimes we just need to make it from one day to the next. Travel allows us to escape the mundane life we create out of comfort and habit, discover new territory, and explore life through a different lens. This, in return, allows us to discover who we are and what we want while uncovering desires, thoughts, and revelations we never knew we needed. It encourages growth and makes it easier to see things from a more significant point of view once we make our way home.

Returning to travel has felt like coming home – not because of any specific destination but because I could finally return to myself. It allowed me to be curious again, slow down in a world constantly asking us to speed up and rediscover what is important to me. It’s helped ignite my love for writing and reading again! I’ve started to become a bit more comfortable talking to people I don’t know – something that my social anxiety has struggled with in recent years. I’m learning new things about myself and rediscovering what brings me joy…and contentment. I can find peace in the simple moments again – even at home.

Perhaps all of this could be accomplished without flying thousands of miles away but there’s a deeper meaning to travel that I’ve simply become addicted to. I want to absorb the places I visit into my soul and allow every one of my senses to remember the experience. I want to smell the pasta wafting out from the restaurants and feel the salty breeze on my face from the ocean. I want to learn about the people who call these places home and their history to understand how they got where they are today. And then I want to tell their story so that the people who don’t like to venture far from home or don’t have the ability to, can learn as well.

For me, getting back to travel is more than just getting a Mai Tai on the beach (although I wouldn’t turn that down!). It’s about experiencing different cultures and places around the world so that I can share them, whether that’s through writing and telling the story or giving a friend recommendations. And boy! Does it feel great to be back at it.