Traveling....It Ain't for Everybody

Traveling —It leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. ~Ibn Battuta

When I think about my life, I am still very surprised that it has turned out to be so great. I have come a long ways from looking at cornfields in the shadow of the city on the edge of Nebraska. A black girl resembling those who walked the trails of tears. I was born with traveling in my blood, a descendant of a nomadic people who danced through different terrain to embrace the sight of the world.

The storyteller in me marvels because I know it is not the story I tell, but the one I live that delights the reader.  I could not imagine a life bond to a desk watching life from a clock forced to sit in an office dying to live. However, I am sure there are many who could not fathom constantly being on the move and replacing stability with frequent flux.  Yet, I find pleasure in movement as life transitions with each step I make. A life is bondless that transports stories on tongues of drifters who only come to plant seeds in foreign places, this is the life I love.

In 10 days I will turn 38 and my mother has finally come to terms that dancing with change is not optional, but a must. However, I still want and desire to have a traveling partner that finds it fitting to spend 60 days caravanning through the tropics instead of buying a house with a garage and a picket fence that encloses life. I can’t see exchanging my life for normalcy on a block with neighbors who fear speaking because it might bring us closer. I would rather be a renter on the run like Bonny and Clyde holding up strangers in a community where conversation and laughter means you are living on purpose despite the unknowns of tomorrow.

I dance with the opportunity to meet a story so free of words and that it smiles in the greeting of strangers because it is being told for the first time. When I travel to a place I have never been, I do not need words to describe such a place, breathing the freshness of new adventure is enough. The excitement of perpetual change could scare someone, but I am fearless when it comes to transformation. I live for the revolution.

Are you a dancer or a spectator who only wants to view the world through pictures and television shows? If you are a spectator, that's ok. As Jay Z would say, “This ain’t for everybody.” However, I realized it is for me. 

#thenomadicchick

#chajones

#womenofcolorlivingabroad