Traveler's Identity

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I first traveled abroad when I was 14. Back then it was a long and difficult process, hard to imagine today, that involved lengthy custom control and the slow procedures. All my travels abroad looked the same for many years afterward. I would have never imagined driving up the highway and only having a quick glimpse of the sign showing I’m entering another country.

After overcoming that initial fear of the unknown, I understood that with every journey something changed in my way of being. With time, laws relaxed and traveling in Europe became easier. It didn’t feel like such a big challenge anymore. But that exciting curiosity of finding something new and unknown or of returning to something familiar always made me want to travel as much as possible. Traveling opened my eyes to the world, to its complexity, diversity and its inherent beauty. It also thought me something about my inner being, about how much I can accept, about how tolerant I am, how much ego I have or how much of a giving person I can be. I’m certain that without traveling my identity would have become rigid much too soon. Traveling helps me grow and evolve constantly.

My only regret now, as I sit and watch children of all ages and nationalities running around huge Lego bricks, is that I never had the chance to travel sooner. I can only imagine how much freedom and complexity resides within the mind of a person who opens their eyes to the vastness and beautiful diversity of the world as a child.

Published in Zile si Nopti magazine, 30 Aug, 2019

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