“I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company
you keep in the empty moments.”
In contrast to the cliché of beginning any harangue with quoted poetry, the poem from which I stole this stanza, “The Invitation,” was introduced to me through a friend’s away message. Fitting with our techno-dependent generation, the poem has snuggled safely on my desktop ever since, with this, its ending, a mini-mantra for my adventures abroad.
This poem made me sputter tea all over my little desk in my little room in London. London is a proper destination in itself, but for the restless its invitation of “one step closer to everywhere else” is impossible to ignore.
You too may suffer from this restlessness. I’ve thus provided a helpful list of symptoms:
• Were you born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus or have you ever been described as “ramblin”?
• Is Kerouac’s On the Road, typically “borrowed,” currently stuffed into your bag?
• When you see a Coach bus on campus are you overcome with intense desire to flag it down and hop on, spending the last 60 dollars in your M & T account?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, you too are one of the Wandering Souls. But don’t be alarmed; it’s part of being American. Frederick Jackson Turner said it best with the Frontier Thesis in 1893. Turner theorized that the frontier — the area between Society and The Wild — is the source of American empowerment, and is essential to forging a unique identity.
Skip ahead some years and you’ve got us. The frontier has moved, but it still represents freedom, “breaking the bonds of custom, offering new experiences” (as Turner said). With all the energy and ambition of being young intellectuals at a top university, we still suffer — and more acutely — stagnation when kept still, starvation to eat up every experience, and obsession with trying ourselves against The Big Bad Beautiful World.
I’m no exception, having traveled to six countries in three months, and seven cities in two weeks’ time.
I have drunk wine at a curbside café in Paris, pinky-extended tea in London, cervezas overlooking a plaza in Madrid and three sips of Guinness in Dublin before I ordered Harp.
I have eaten the traditional English breakfast and Black Pudding (no one told me an ingredient was blood until I was finished); the Spanish Churros con Chocolate and Tail of the Bull (same trick, different country); the French baguette sandwich and six variations of potatoes (only the Irish).
In Paris, I watched an ancient man chase a thief out of a café with his cane, cursing loudly in French and then sharing a wink as he returned peacefully to his booth. In Cordoba I arrived a complete stranger to a Spanish woman who, three days later, informally adopted me, sharing jokes of becoming gorda after her generosity with comida. In Howthe, south of Dublin, I hiked down from sea-swept cliffs to accidentally witness a rescued seal’s reunion with the water. In London, I share a flat with five mates who leave notes too crass and caring for American translation whenever they go out.
But we can’t accept every invitation, and the best moments have been the empty, in-between ones — reading at Hyde Park in London, glancing out a bus window at the Spanish countryside — where I’ve been alone (that dreaded a-word) and felt full. For the restless: only when you’re at home with yourself can you realize the best part of leaving is finding home everywhere.