Wanderlust

Despite having never been on a holiday in my life, the idea of wanderlust has intrigued me to the moon and back. What is it about taking pictures of notable tourist sights and visiting places that we can’t pronounce the names of that attract people so much? There can’t possibly be much to all these fancy buildings and towers and old monuments that people around the world come in and pile up to see and take pictures of and call it a holiday? I mean we can’t all be out of minds; there has to be a reason behind why we do it.

Wanderlust is a concept that seems very idealistic when you read people’s blogs and stories but to fully grasp the idea, you have to be in the moment. You have to be high on the air in the streets when passing borders from one country to another. You have to be the one holding hands with someone while they look up at the sky without their conscious playing any part in how they whisper your name. You have to be the one watching your best friend try to hide her raging laughter through Parisians nights because she’s pretending to be mad at you. You have to be the one freaking out when you first see the statue of Liberty because for the first time, something is actually like the movies. You have to smile at all the different accents you hear up and down the globe and then wonder why people eat snakes and alligators and grasshoppers. You have to be the one sat in front of pieces of architecture larger than life in the middle of Brussels and think about how it ever got there. How people long before your time created such masterpieces without prudish project managers or more men in suits and ties telling others what to do.  

Wanderlust is cringy but it’s real. That’s what wanderlust is. It was wild and timid. It was magic and dust. It’s the dirt on your shoes from the muddy road you had to walk through because that alley at 4 am in the morning in the middle of France wasn’t paved in gravel. It’s the burning of your skin in Barcelona because someone forgot to pack the sun lotion and probably left it on your couch when you were in a rush to get to the airport. 

Personally, it’s the sheer size when it comes to the prehistoric buildings that bother me the most being the 5 ft 2 midget I am. How did people back in the day even get up that high? How big were the ladders? Did people in that day and age even know what ladders were? When were ladders invented-

You get the picture...

What does wanderlust mean to you?