Why I Travel or something?

A friend made an interesting observation the other day while we were discussing travel—specifically travel more of the lifestyle variety than the touristy-type. Offhanded though his comment may have been, it was one of those little thoughts that stayed stuck in my brain long after we both hung up the phone. 

He said something like this: "It makes sense; humans have been moving around since... since humans were even a thing."

It's a simple statement, but profound to me. People are constantly moving from place to place, and have been for a very long time!

As we talked, we were marveling in the experience of travel--in the authenticity and ardor of life that we seem to find when we adventure beyond the bounds of our geographic home, in the serendipity of our meetings with people whose stories we would have never known had we not met them along the road. Interestingly, we both have experienced better, more secure version of ourselves in those times of variability and movement. When we travel, we often encounter a reality of this planet earth that is shockingly and peacefully clear, while at the same time immeasurably obscure and unknowable. Sometimes travel doesn't just "open our eyes;" it awakens a whole new sense within us.

Why I write...

Writing is a passion of mine—or so I have tricked myself into believing.

I really do marvel in the way we can package up our thoughts into a unique string of words and symbols and transport them to an audience across the room, around the world, or one hundred years in the future. The thoughts are then reinterpreted, translated, contextualized—maybe even misunderstood—but still, a connection is made between writer and reader.

I think what I have struggled with as a "writer" is what—if anything—is even worth sending across that connection. Why do I write? Why should anyone read it? Am I asking the wrong questions altogether? 

This afternoon, I have the means to put these words up on the Internet, throw them in the cyber-face of all my facebook friends, and probably get at least a hundred people to glance at them in a day or two. It's amazing how quickly and widely my words can diffuse... 

If, however, I had to scribble out my thoughts in ink and then send them in a bottle across the Atlantic, if my message had to travel 1,000 miles by Pony Express, or even if I just had to stick a letter in an envelope and drop it in the mail box, I think that I would choose more poignant, meaningful words. Perhaps I would stop to think:

Why am I writing? To whom am I writing? What will it mean to them when they read it?

If I am a supposedly a "writer"—not just a girl with wi-fi, free time, and adequate knowledge of the English language—then what is my responsibility? How can I really reach anyone? How and why should I write anything that screams out among all the chatter, that acts upon this world, that wont be chewed up and spit out and never heard from again? 

In the past, and for many today, connections between writers and readers have to span across oceans, scale mountains, transform to new languages, and pass by governments. While communication may appear free and easy in the world of google translate and twitter, it has its own treacherous barriers to cross—and I think its bounds are hugely overestimated. 

I'm sort of working to be a writer of some sort. Maybe a travel writer, maybe a journalist, maybe an anthropologist, maybe a biographer, maybe (probably) something else entirely.

My hope is that I will learn to write what is worth writing.

...That I would be willing, despite how simple it is just to click the "SUBMIT" button, to ask those questions I originally posed: Why am I writing? To whom am I writing? What will it mean to them when they read it? 

...That I will not speak just because I can, but—at least more often—because I must.

I want discover if there is even a way to write words that don't skip like pebbles across computer screens and magazines, but that plop like a rock into the waters of the heart, sinking to the bottom, staying there, causing ripples that go out for miles. 

I think it's possible, and I'd like to try.