Recollections En Route: The Most Successful Relationship I’ve Ever Had

It was about hour… dramatic pause while I attempt to do second grade math… 13 in transit. I was on board flight two of the day. My flight from Daegu to Shanghai was spectacular in the sense that it lasted one measly hour, and I only got slightly nervous during take off. I found myself on flight two when I suddenly discovered something miraculous.

For the first time in my life, I was reading on an airplane. Never before have I been willing {and able} to rid my head completely of my anxieties to focus on a novel in flight.

Sure, I thought an engine failed while they were cooking {read: burning} our dinner, but I am not claiming to be perfect here.

Here’s the thing. They have recently{?} banned using lithium batteries while in flight and I boarded the aircraft with 30% battery left in my phone. Obviously there was no way I was willing to risk my life to charge my phone, therefore I was left with some time {4 hours to be specific} on my hands. My first thought was to enjoy the in-flight entertainment, but it consisted of the communal screens replaying, “How to Make Mr. Krabs {from Spongebob} Out of Watermelon” over and over again.

I then opted for the radio and was pleasantly surprised. Right out the gate they were playing “Under the Mistletoe” from the Justin Bieber Christmas Album. BANGER {though let’s not forget it was the middle of August}. They followed this up with an entire Sean Kingston album circa 2007. Though I love a good throw back, and a reason to bring up the fact that I partied with Sean Kingston in his penthouse in Vegas {yaaas}, I was over it after a few songs.

After a last attempt to entertain myself by watching a five year old, watch the new Jungle Book movie, I pulled out my book: Eat, Pray, Love. I KNOW. I am a living, breathing cliche. A solo female traveler reading the Bible of solo female traveling.

But I hadn’t read it yet, and it felt like a crime not to do so at this point in my life. So, I began. And I read nearly 100 pages on that flight. I found myself nodding and smiling in agreement multiple times, and even stopped to re-read certain passages. I wanted to share one that truly resonated with me:

Still, despite all of this, travel is the great love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless, newborn baby – I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to – I just don’t care. – Eat, Pray, Love

This passage is the perfect way to describe my unconditional love of travel. At this point in my journal, my handwriting was progressively getting worse as the building-sized, flying capsule shifted and swayed through turbulence.

And yet, there I was – writing.

While also enduring my greatest fear. Regardless of this fear, I willingly make a choice to board every plane necessary to continue exploring the world. I sacrifice the many comforts of home in order to throw myself into the unknown.

As Elizabeth Gilbert said, travel is worth every cost and sacrifice. It’s worth getting ripped off by Paris street performers. It’s worth being straight up poor. It’s worth losing relationships. It’s worth getting food poisoning, heat rash, and blisters all over my body. It’s worth frying every inch of my hair due to bad voltage conversion {on my part}. It’s worth the judgment from people who don’t understand it. It’s even worth missing Christmas {which I will be doing again this year}.

I’ve risked so much more for travel, than I have in any other aspect of my life. That being said, it’s a two way street. Travel has rewarded me with gifts that I can never repay. It’s allowed me to grow, while also understanding I am going to make mistakes. I’ve taken breaks from travel, but it’s always there when I’m ready to return. Travel is the true love of my life.

And it’s the most successful relationship I’ve ever had.