I Travel Because I Can — Southern Belle Nomad

I am privileged. I am quite possibly the most privileged because not only did I grow up with comfortability, but also with the good ole Southern teachings of humility, kindness, and hospitality. From the honest to goodness bottom of my heart, I do not know what I did to be given the life I’ve lived so far.

When I graduated from college, there was always a lingering question in my mind: what do you want to do with your life? There were the intellectual answers: I want to afford to live. I want to be happy. I want to put my work toward something I’m good at. These were all valid, but they weren’t my essence. My essence always answered this question, and still does, with another question: what will make the world a better place?

Growing up on a remote farm in bum fuck Egypt, Georgia, I was naturally inclined to the “other.” The other defined as anything other than my own bubble. I always wanted to go to Atlanta, the “big city.” Post-visiting New York City for the first time, I wanted to go back time and time again. No one was surprised when I went intercontinental and landed in California for college.

Today I sit on a balcony in Budva, Montenegro looking out on mountains topped with whispys of water vapor from what I, as a tiny human being, can only guess is the Adriatic Sea. (In my spare time, I like to imagine all water vapor is comprised of baby water molecules from all seas everywhere.)

I don’t speak the language here, but I can walk to the bodegas and smile at the man down the street who sold me his own “vino” even though I didn’t have enough euro coins to pay for it. He said to me “it’s okay, you pay tomorrow.” The magnitude and simplicity of that community and camaraderie with a stranger brought me near tears. It took me back to a recent world. I was 11 years old in my childhood front yard making Pokémon card bargains with my “neighborhood” boyfriend who knew in his heart of hearts I’d never slight him.

What will make the world a better place? Connection. Common ground. Understanding. Hospitality. Kindness. Community. Love. The ridding of the “other.”

Yes, I am privileged. I grew up in a comfortable home. I have no student loan debt. I studied freely without a nation telling me what I could and could not read. I was allowed to go to college. I am allowed to walk on the streets alone as a woman (in my home country). I have two legs that carry me through this life. I have two hands that can touch and love another. I have two ears that still hold melodies from my mother who always sang to me as a child. I have two eyes that can see these incredible crevices that this giant ball in the middle of the universe has carved out of nothing. It doesn’t care whether anyone looks at it or not.

From this moment forward, I choose to take my privilege and move through the world with it in the only way I know how to make it better. I choose to travel. I choose to take my body as far as it will carry me and to meet every person with the most authentic openness I have ever known. I choose to dispel the word “other” from my vocabulary because it does not exist. I travel because I can, and I can because I travel.

FACEBOOK