TRAVEL FAR NOW, my life’s motto. I’ve used the phrase as my social media handle for so many years that I can no longer remember when it began. But it reaches far enough back to a time when I was still traveling great distances—from one place to another—as casually as walking around the corner to the convenience store.
To travel far and do it now was my mission when I was younger. It began with a high school semester in Jerusalem, on a leafy campus among other Jewish teenagers from around the world. It was 1993. A few students had visited Israel with their families from Sarajevo, never to return to their war-torn country.
I came back to Skokie with wide-eyed wonder, having caught a glimpse of a world pulsating with stories that made my heart leap off cliffs of curiosity. I wanted more of that feeling. I wanted to devour it whole and emerge on the other side standing on a mountaintop of self-awareness.
Travel does not quite work like that, though. I was still me wherever I went, however far.
I had the privilege and honor of traveling farther still, this time to Kenya with a student group from liberal arts colleges. My heart-mind kept leaping through new hoops of self-awareness. I fell asleep in Swahili fishing villages thinking I finally belonged somewhere. I woke up with a coastal consciousness, feeling sure I'd been here before.
In my twenties, I threw myself into learning languages—Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili—and wherever I went, I spoke with the naïve but courageous abandon of someone who believed that if she tried hard enough, she could talk herself into knowing every alphabet. I thank everyone I met for the patience and grace they showed me—this kind of eagerness can get irksome, I realize now.
Every time I returned home believing I knew something about the world, or about my place in it, I only wanted more. To go deeper, farther, harder, for longer stretches of time, to turn myself inside out, to test the limits and edges of a self inside a culture.
I asked questions. I took notes. I kept hundreds of journals detailing the conversations that flowed from an open-hearted approach to reaching my next destination. I said yes to invitations for coffee. I counseled lost pilgrims at bus stations. I danced at strangers’ weddings.
Travel far now, I kept telling myself.
For a decade, I lived at the edge of other worlds, on an island in the middle of an ocean. I could not swim, and I often felt more fear than trust in the waves. I learned to live with the sun and its demands. I learned to live with unpredictable weather, unpredictable patterns, unpredictable people, and their needs. I learned to recognize the pain in the pit of me as anxiety.
As I got older, I realized that this motto—this mandate to travel far now—was as much an inner journey as one that might fling me toward other shores. The pandemic gave me time to learn again how to rhyme with rituals and prayers. Like so many others, I began a spiritual trek that led me to the doorstep of the Christian mystics.
Simone Weil and Thomas Merton lit a match or two. The saints came marching home to me: the ones in Naples, the ones in New Mexico, the ones sleeping in the grottos of quiet Wisconsin towns.
I wanted to spend more time on the trails within. I needed the quiet and sunlight reserved for contemplatives. I hungered for space and time to divine a future that did not require another ticket or passport.
I was so tired, I am still so tired. My body doesn’t cooperate with schedules or sudden changes in them, the way it used to bend into any shape necessary to meet the demands of the trip.
So I got going—traveling far now within—at the speed of self-trust.
I learned how to time travel through vintage objects: the kind that transport us with the pull of a string, the tug of a rope, the spring of a button. These are objects that hold the cellular particles of a larger truth. I trade in their stories now, a memory merchant of sorts—a term I did not invent, but one I have adopted for the particular ways I spend my days.
I have not been on a plane in a few years. The last time I traveled overseas, I went to Italy in a heatwave and swore I would never do that again, at least not in July.
But of course I will travel again.
I am called to Kano, called to the deserts of New Mexico, called to the shores of Michigan. I am a double Sagittarius. I will see you in Vermont or Venice before too long.
Still, I remind myself that rest stops on the inner roads are gracious and spacious. I like it here inside myself, where the days are long and the nights promise a big, fat moon for a lamp to guide the way.
Once, I drove from Chicago to Vermont in a day and stopped only once for coffee at a gas station so close to the finish line that it barely counted. I never want to drive that far alone again—unless it is within.
Reading is another kind of travel. We all know this. When I read a book about a road trip, I want to get in the car, take my dog for a drive, and never return. I used to play a game with an ex every time we reached a new town. The game was called “I Could Live Here,” and we would spin tales about the alternative lives that might unfold if we stopped and stayed awhile.
Because we spoke those lives into existence, I sometimes think some version of them carries on in ribbons of reality in the places we merely passed through. I cannot be certain of that. But I know there is still some part of me alive in the places where I lived longest. If I return—no, when I return—my body will click back into the grooves I once made with my being in that space and continue the living I did there.
Travel far now, out there. Travel far now, within.
I am still finding words to explain this motto—this orientation, this philosophy—but maybe I do not need to explain it after all. We are all travelers together in this world. We are all just passing through, aren’t we?
To travel far and do it now was my mission when I was younger. It began with a high school semester in Jerusalem, on a leafy campus among other Jewish teenagers from around the world. It was 1993. A few students had visited Israel with their families from Sarajevo, never to return to their war-torn country.
I came back to Skokie with wide-eyed wonder, having caught a glimpse of a world pulsating with stories that made my heart leap off cliffs of curiosity. I wanted more of that feeling. I wanted to devour it whole and emerge on the other side standing on a mountaintop of self-awareness.
Travel does not quite work like that, though. I was still me wherever I went, however far.
I had the privilege and honor of traveling farther still, this time to Kenya with a student group from liberal arts colleges. My heart-mind kept leaping through new hoops of self-awareness. I fell asleep in Swahili fishing villages thinking I finally belonged somewhere. I woke up with a coastal consciousness, feeling sure I'd been here before.
In my twenties, I threw myself into learning languages—Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili—and wherever I went, I spoke with the naïve but courageous abandon of someone who believed that if she tried hard enough, she could talk herself into knowing every alphabet. I thank everyone I met for the patience and grace they showed me—this kind of eagerness can get irksome, I realize now.
Every time I returned home believing I knew something about the world, or about my place in it, I only wanted more. To go deeper, farther, harder, for longer stretches of time, to turn myself inside out, to test the limits and edges of a self inside a culture.
I asked questions. I took notes. I kept hundreds of journals detailing the conversations that flowed from an open-hearted approach to reaching my next destination. I said yes to invitations for coffee. I counseled lost pilgrims at bus stations. I danced at strangers’ weddings.
Travel far now, I kept telling myself.
For a decade, I lived at the edge of other worlds, on an island in the middle of an ocean. I could not swim, and I often felt more fear than trust in the waves. I learned to live with the sun and its demands. I learned to live with unpredictable weather, unpredictable patterns, unpredictable people, and their needs. I learned to recognize the pain in the pit of me as anxiety.
As I got older, I realized that this motto—this mandate to travel far now—was as much an inner journey as one that might fling me toward other shores. The pandemic gave me time to learn again how to rhyme with rituals and prayers. Like so many others, I began a spiritual trek that led me to the doorstep of the Christian mystics.
Simone Weil and Thomas Merton lit a match or two. The saints came marching home to me: the ones in Naples, the ones in New Mexico, the ones sleeping in the grottos of quiet Wisconsin towns.
I wanted to spend more time on the trails within. I needed the quiet and sunlight reserved for contemplatives. I hungered for space and time to divine a future that did not require another ticket or passport.
I was so tired, I am still so tired. My body doesn’t cooperate with schedules or sudden changes in them, the way it used to bend into any shape necessary to meet the demands of the trip.
So I got going—traveling far now within—at the speed of self-trust.
I learned how to time travel through vintage objects: the kind that transport us with the pull of a string, the tug of a rope, the spring of a button. These are objects that hold the cellular particles of a larger truth. I trade in their stories now, a memory merchant of sorts—a term I did not invent, but one I have adopted for the particular ways I spend my days.
I have not been on a plane in a few years. The last time I traveled overseas, I went to Italy in a heatwave and swore I would never do that again, at least not in July.
But of course I will travel again.
I am called to Kano, called to the deserts of New Mexico, called to the shores of Michigan. I am a double Sagittarius. I will see you in Vermont or Venice before too long.
Still, I remind myself that rest stops on the inner roads are gracious and spacious. I like it here inside myself, where the days are long and the nights promise a big, fat moon for a lamp to guide the way.
Once, I drove from Chicago to Vermont in a day and stopped only once for coffee at a gas station so close to the finish line that it barely counted. I never want to drive that far alone again—unless it is within.
Reading is another kind of travel. We all know this. When I read a book about a road trip, I want to get in the car, take my dog for a drive, and never return. I used to play a game with an ex every time we reached a new town. The game was called “I Could Live Here,” and we would spin tales about the alternative lives that might unfold if we stopped and stayed awhile.
Because we spoke those lives into existence, I sometimes think some version of them carries on in ribbons of reality in the places we merely passed through. I cannot be certain of that. But I know there is still some part of me alive in the places where I lived longest. If I return—no, when I return—my body will click back into the grooves I once made with my being in that space and continue the living I did there.
Travel far now, out there. Travel far now, within.
I am still finding words to explain this motto—this orientation, this philosophy—but maybe I do not need to explain it after all. We are all travelers together in this world. We are all just passing through, aren’t we?
