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Travel, Love and Heartbreak

(Editor note. Written in 2016). It’s supposed to complete you, to comfort you, to make each day more exciting. Future plans, dreamy ideas, one crazy experience followed closely by the next one. Love, in essence, isn’t a complicated beast. It’s simple and pure. It fits over and around us easily, it complements us in every facet of our lives. And that’s why we want it so deeply. It’s why we chase it so passionately. Because it breaks the mundane and makes us feel alive. Even when everything around us may be crumbling, love is always there. It’s our priority. At least it normally is.

Priorities

Sometimes though, we end up prioritizing something else. Love gets put in the backseat, told to shut up, we refuse to listen, turn up the music, and keep driving. Something else in our life becomes all consuming. Life seems complete already, you’re comforted by doing what you always dreamt of, every day is truly more exciting than the last. Future plans, dreamy ideas, crazy experiences – this is your life. It doesn’t seem like you need something intangible to gift you these circumstances. Your lifestyle gifts you them every day. But there’s an echo, a shadow of something missing. Surely life isn’t just about external moments, and wonderful, new experiences. Whilst they offer us so much happiness, perhaps true happiness is only known when shared. After all is said and done, what’s a beautiful sunset without another set of eyes to share it with. What’s a New Year’s in the Caribbean without someone to kiss? Yet another double-bed for a single you, it doesn’t quite add up. But marrying love and travel is easier said than done.

Dream lifestyle or dream relationship?

So we understand that we want to be free. We want to chase our dreams, explore every corner of the globe, soak up everything the world has to offer us. But we want to love too, and be loved, deeply. But we forego one for the other, at least partially. If we’re all-in for the lifestyle we’ve fought so hard for, can we truly be all-in for love too? And equally, if we’re all in for love, do we have enough left in the tank to be all-in for anything else? To commit to something so all-consuming costs us so much of ourselves, I’m not sure we have enough of us to do it twice, certainly not concurrently. So something’s gotta give. Something’s always gotta give. And this is our reality. Perhaps the selfishness of dream chasing, the focus of goal setting comes at a cost. Personal accomplishment doesn’t come without sacrifice, but at what price do we say that sacrifice is too much? Each individual can only answer that themselves.

Sacrifice

So maybe we sacrifice the dream lifestyle, and we’re all-in with love. It’s so beautiful on paper, and we can hope to be one of the lucky ones. They do exist, somewhere out there. When it’s true and pure. When it’s full of honesty and it’s genuinely lasting. Beautiful. But if it’s not perfect if it’s false or fraudulent. Where trust became distrust, and love becomes hate, where does that leave your expensive sacrifice. So we must choose the right one, easier said than done I know. Or perhaps first we get our lifestyle in order, perhaps that should always be step one.

Single minded

So is that the answer? The solution? I don’t have a universal truth of course. If I did, I’d bottle it and sell it online for millions. For what it’s worth my personal take is that while we’re young I say we give everything we have to create the life we want, no one can take that from us. We earn it. Anything else and we run the danger of giving so much of ourselves to the wrong person, then we’re right back to square one. I’ve been guilty of both of these things on this 10 year journey of mine. Too dedicated to the lifestyle, and then too dedicated to love.

Yet here I am with the life I wanted, I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to say I did it the hard way. Yet, despite that, all the effort spent someone who may be worth it but you’re just not sure. Someone who made mistakes, along side the mistakes you made yourself. Someone who gave so much, but of course had to take something too. That tough. But there’s a lesson there too, there always is and it’s something we should be grateful for. I’m happy I did it this way around, so here we go onwards, and upwards. The lifestyle is now in place, time to look for that elusive other thing.

* EDIT 2024: I’m now happily married, dream house built, and a baby on the way!