Don’t date a traveler. If you know what’s good for you and
you like your little corner of the world, don’t date a traveler, because she’ll
want to pull you out of it.
Don’t date a traveler, because she’ll get antsy when you
play video games. She craves real conversations instead of text messaging
across a table, even if one of her “must haves” in hostel amenities is free
wifi. Don’t date a traveler because she’ll constantly be converting the amount
of money you spent on flowers for her into nights of stay at a hostel; she’ll
have problems sitting still through sporting events that don’t teach her
something she doesn’t already know, and she’ll ask you not if you had fun at a
friend’s house, but if you met anyone interesting.
Don’t date a traveler, especially if you’re hoping to tame
her. Don’t date a traveler if you’re hoping that by dating her you will give
her roots, when in reality she is more likely to want to use her wings. Don’t
date a traveler because even outside of traveling she will assess her shoes and
yours by their ability to stay on during river crossings; withstand rusty nails
found sole-first in the street, and whether they’re breathable in tropical
climates.
Don’t date a traveler if your idea of excitement is signing
a five-year lease, or taking out a mortgage, because a traveler has seen people
with bigger, brighter smiles sweeping the dirt floors in their houses; she has
swum with dolphins and listened to coral crackle like Rice Krispies in warm
oceans, and she is not impressed by matching sheets or new towels.
Don’t date a traveler, especially if you find yourself
saying to her, “When we get married you’ll stop traveling, right?” because that
means you never really understood your traveler; you never really listened to
the stories she told you about all the stars she could see from the top of the
mountain in the Alps, or the way she wished she could cry at the beauty of the
Great Barrier Reef but couldn’t stop breathing into her scuba mask long enough
to get the sob out. Don’t date a traveler if you aren’t at least willing to let
her continue traveling, because it means that you don’t notice that nothing
lights up her face or her demeanor like meeting another fellow traveler and
swapping notes on the most terrible bathrooms, the worst cases of Monteczuma’s
Revenge, which country produces the best lovers and which tiny surf village in
Costa Rica boasts the best Mexican food.
If you want to date a traveler, buy a backpack. Be willing
to hike in the dark – albeit slowly; she’s adventurous, but not necessarily
superwoman – to a hidden hot springs, an untouched powder field, or a clearing
where you can lay out and look at the stars outside the city lights. If you
want to date a traveler, don’t buy her foot cream when her feet start to get
itchy, check your bank account and look for tickets with her. If you love a
traveler, be prepared to love someone who can always tell you another way to
see a problem – the way they would see it in the Amazon, for instance – and to
be reminded that the world is much bigger than the little corner you call home.
If you love a traveler, it’s best if you travel with her,
because then you can finally see the world through her eyes: a world full of
wonder, of new chances for connection, sunsets from new beaches and mountain
tops, new birdsongs, and new cultures that show that the way to happiness is
not through something you can buy, but through things you can walk through:
rivers, valleys, over mountain passes, amongst the crowds at an Independence
Day parade, or weaving in and out of the masked and costumed at a Day of the
Dead celebration in a small mountain village in Mexico.
Love and travel addict kisses,
Morgan
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