Solo Travel Part 2 - Living With Reality

 

“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.” - Florida Scott-Maxwell

I have a terminal case of wanderlust. But even as the scrolling and research heightens my anticipation, once I arrive, alone, in a foreign city, I’m often struck by the question: Why? Why did I haul myself in a cramped seat across the ocean and plunk myself down, alone, in a strange place. What am I doing here? 

Is this part of living fiercely? Is this my adventurous self who must know what’s out there, because staying in one’s comfort zone for too long becomes uncomfortable. When routines become mundane, then it’s time to wander.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines Wanderlust as a ‘strong longing for or impulse toward wandering’.  And Robert Louis Stevenson writes in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move..."

So, perhaps my love for travel is not to see new places, but to leave my old life for a while.  And, if that is the case, any new place will do. But that can’t be true because there are many places I do not care to venture to. What I want is beauty, art, and culture. I want to wander down quaint streets, try interesting foods, sit at an outdoor table, sip on a glass of wine and people-watch.

My solo travel adventures began when I was fifty, a late start. My first few trips were all about hiking. Mountains beckoned and I longed to lace up my boots and hit the trail, going up, up, the steeper and rockier the better, up to a summit. But now, I cannot do what I did then. Aging joints and feet ache. So I have adjusted my travel to exploring cities and towns, museums and art galleries.

You want to hang on to that younger self, the one with less achy joints and the ability to walk long distances. It is not easy to let go of that version of you. And yet you must.

The question keeps coming at me. Why do I travel? Am I trying to prove something to myself, to others? Or do I just want to wander, to escape the ordinary. Sometimes I’m in a hotel room wishing I was home, in my favourite chair by the window. Yet, after months at home, my feet will get itchy and I will begin my online research. Which new place do I want to explore?

In the Netherlands this May, I strolled down the canal streets, searching for that magical glimpse, the beauty of a secret hofje, an inner courtyard of lush green, dappled sunlight dancing on a profusion of flowers. Is that what I was looking for, far from home, that one magical moment? Or standing in the Rijks Museum in front of Vermeer’s Milkmaid?

And walking those streets, the realization my aching feet are not what they used to be dawned on me. I felt the pangs of lost youth, diminishing energy, stiff joints. Connections were an ocean away, only reachable through the phone helping me navigate unfamiliar territory. A set of steep stairs at the end of a day, escalator broken, elicited a silent groan, and envy at those who skipped nimbly down, disdaining the handrail, which I reached for to prevent my tired body from tumbling in a heap to the bottom, in a foreign country no less. If there are to be broken bones, it’s best they break at home.

But even so, others are old, not me. That woman with the grey hair and stooped shoulders is old. I am not. Because look at me, I can travel solo and use the apps on my phone just like a young person to check trains and planes, busses and trams. Is this living fierce with reality or am I kidding myself?

I return to my hotel room at dinner time, after a long day that included a walking tour. And damn, I’m too tired to write up the glowing review the guide Sebastian requested. I’ll do it later, but that later never comes. Because my thoughts are elsewhere.

After the tour, I walked through the Red-Light district and met the eyes of the women in the windows, red curtain drawn aside. I averted my eyes before they did, lest they thought I was judging them. I felt sad for them, but maybe they felt sad for me too. Maybe they thought, look at that old woman with the grey hair and shoulders drooping with fatigue. She has lost her dewy youthfulness, and who will find her attractive now? No one will look at her with yearning and wanting. She has lost her power.

But, in my heart, I know that is not true. Because now, at this age, I feel more myself than I ever have. And that is power, this knowing I am now my own person, this is who I was meant to be, if such a thing exists. Maybe we are only meant to be who we choose to be, once we’ve abandoned who we thought we wanted to be.

The guide Sebastian said that red light enhances one’s appearance, makes your skin look young and flawless, and we should all get ourselves a red light to shine on us. But maybe he’s wrong. Maybe it is aging that makes you grow into your true self, without the need of a spotlight to showcase you.

I spent my birthday solo in Amsterdam, returning to my hotel to find a gift bag hanging on the door knob, with a small bottle of prosecco and two flute glasses. It was a small gesture that filled me with delight. Someone, in this foreign country, knew it was my birthday. I turned a year older alone in a hotel room, no red light to distort my age, and no despair at being alone. I didn’t feel old, no matter what the ladies in the windows might have thought.

Is that living fierce with reality? And don’t we all? Didn’t Anne Frank, whose secret annex I walked through, listening to the history with the same heaviness I could sense in the people around me.

We do what we have to do. We hide when we must, we write when we can’t speak, we use our bodies to pay the bills, we massage cream into our aching feet, we toast ourselves alone on our birthdays, we keep on living.

The ladies in the windows will age and one day the red light won’t work for them anymore, and they will learn to live a new reality. Because we must keep changing along with our bodies. When we adjust what is possible, we discover new possibilities.