Wanderlusters & Homebodies.

I got to thinking on my walk at midnight home along the beach:  What is it that I am searching for?  Why do I feel the need to be away from home? What is it that I’m trying to find exactly?  A typical Australian bloke sat at the bar tonight.  He’s the quintessential Aussie laborer type, about late 20’s early 30’s, missing about 4 of his bottom teeth, and has always used the lame pickup lines when he could on me.  But this night, he wasn’t surrounded by his friends, so he had no one to impress. He could tell that I was sad about going home, and he told me he was just like me.  That he always felt the need to travel, to be away from home, otherwise, he felt like he wasn't growing.  See, when you return from a journey away from home, no matter if it is a few months or a year, you come home and everyone is exactly the same.  Sure, they have grown a little, but not as much as you that’s for sure.  And there’s something painful about that.  It’s been a fear of mine to never grow, to never see the world, to never actually live my life. It's actually a relief to know that there are other people out there in the world who are like me.   I always said that when you backpack and you meet other travelers, you weed out the people who don’t understand.  Because if they understood, they would be traveling too. I guess we all have different desires, but I just can’t wrap my head around another perspective on this matter.  To me, I don’t see why everyone isn’t running away from their homes and traveling every inch of the world.  That’s why I get along so well with people who love to travel because we get that.  To us, it doesn’t make sense to spend your time or money on anything else. And this guy sitting at the bar, knew exactly what I was going through.  The nightmares about going home and being forced to stay.  The difficulty of finding balance of enjoying life when you know you have to leave in a week.  And the fear of that 4^th day.  The day when you’ve seen everyone again and already said how your trip was even though no one will ever understand how truly amazing it was. Then everyone will get used to you being home again and expect you to be the same as you were when you left.  But you’re not the same.  You never will be.  As my daddy says,  “its like squeezing toothpaste out of tube, you can’t ever get it back in.”  I was like the toothpaste inside the tube before I traveled, but now that I left I can’t go back to being the same person. So, there’s two types of people I figure.  There are the wanderlusters and the homebodies. I am a wanderluster.  I will always and forever have the need and desire to travel.  Then, there are those who just don’t.  They go for vacations, yes, but don’t have that same pull.  Traveling is so deep engrained in my life it literally dictates everything: what I enjoy (things that have to do with escape), what I think about (beaches and boys with foreign accents), & what I work towards (being able to pay for that next trip to wherever).  But the thing I don’t know is, who’s living better: the homebodies or the wanderlusters? Or is there even a “better” or just a different type of living? Our lives are all about making choices, and we always choose what we think is right for us.  That’s the thing though, who’s right?