How to Travel

Through travel, you’re freeing yourself from your inhibitions. You’re growing up – and into yourself. Our journeys can teach us a vital skill: that of not minding so much if we occasionally look a fool. They may be the best conduits for developing into the more confident, less self-conscious people we crave to be.

your senses are on fire, registering everything – the light, the signage, the skin tones, the metallic sounds, the advertisements – as if you were on drugs or a newborn baby – or Tolstoy

Travels are often filled with small pleasures. Perhaps it was the rye bread on the terrace of the hotel, the field of dandelions near the canal, a conversation with someone washing clothes at a fountain, the sound of the city heard on a walk through the park at night…

We should be more careful when heading for destinations that we imagine will spare us every anxiety. We can go, but with a little more scepticism about our likely mood. It is rare to be uncomplicatedly happy for longer than fifteen minutes.

we rely for our self-esteem and sense of comfort on the love of people we cannot control and whose needs and hopes will never align seamlessly with our own