wanderlust for life?

"There is nothing worse for mortals than a life of roaming." -- Homer.

"If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a 'wandering to find home,' why should we not look forward to the arrival?" -- C.S. Lewis.

The change of pace when coming home is hard to deal with, even though it’s a demon I’ve confronted twice before. It feels like my parachute has opened prematurely on the skydive towards Real Life (can’t be far now; I can just make out a pack of rats putting on their running shorts, next to a man with a whistle and a chequered flag). Sure, it’s great to see my family. It’s wonderful to eat all the food I’ve missed. It’s nice to stand in the supermarket aisles in awe of the plethora of deodorant, cheese and leopardskin-print-free underwear available to me. But ultimately I find myself back in a tiny village, on a small island, with little to do.

In the words of many a barstool Socrates, it’s all relative, of course, and I’ll probably get used to it in time, but then again maybe I won’t. Perhaps I’m doomed to meander around for eternity…

The psychology of travelling is not a simple one. It is a common assumption, and in my opinion a rather hackneyed one, that people who move abroad must be running away from something. In fact, on several occasions I have come across a certain kind of prejudice against those of us who refuse to sit still, preferably on a swivel chair behind a computer in a cubicle. I mean, hell, there must be something wrong with you if you can’t "make it" at home. While I know this to be true in many cases (a friend in Madrid used to refer to the breed of psychotic loser peculiar to teaching in Asia as "TEFL trash"), in my experience a lot of travellers are a lot more stable and better adjusted than their counterparts at home, not least because of the enlightening effect of travelling itself. This is not to say that there isn’t an element of escapism in teaching abroad – if there weren’t, what would be the point of going anywhere in the first place? But would those who bitch jealously about people "running away" from their "responsibilities" (even more laughable, considering our unmarried, debt-ridden station in life) just as readily accuse somebody who chooses escape through a love of music or films, a voracious book habit, or a passion for sport, of irresponsible desertion? I doubt it. Of course, the supreme irony is that while most of us on the TEFL circuit are happy to see out one year’s contract after the next, without any illusion of anything big waiting around the corner, the vast majority of recent graduates see their jobs as a stop-gap while they look for something they actually enjoy, usually for several years. Who’s "making it" now?

Well, for now at least I’m determined to try and enjoy the tranquillity of the English countryside. At this point in time, I am surrounded by grass and trees, I cannot hear anything beyond the whining of the cooling fan on my hard drive, and I am certainly not within 25 metres of another human being. All of these are things I haven’t experienced in over a year now. Besides, while my feet take a break, my head and heart are already taking root in Northern Italy, which is my next port of call. And who knows, perhaps my last…