The Poison or the Medicine
the Shadow Side of Nomadic Living
Fogged by jet lag and overdressed for the Lisbon summer heat wave, I left my hotel in search of coffee. In my head, I was writing a scathing complaint to the airline that delayed my flight for 48 hours and a less scathing but equally forceful email to a client. As I turned onto a cobblestone alleyway, my eye caught glints of the blue and turquoise tiles framing the doorway of an old stone building. I paused for a moment to admire the swirling patterns of suns and flowers, inhaling the scents of custard and vanilla wafting from a nearby bakery window. The emails became a distant memory as I wandered into a café and delighted in the fresh sea breeze floating through the plaza. I eavesdropped to the couple next to me, sifting through the lyrics of their Portuguese song. I felt like a baby, born again, entranced by the world around me. There is nothing more invigorating than breathing in the air of a new country.
In the first few moments of my morning in Lisbon, I remembered why I travel. Without a routine, or language, or familiar landmarks to ground myself in—I was able to shed layers of my human construct almost immediately. My ruminating spirals stopped. In a matter of minutes, I became a floating soul who could delight in language, taste, and colors. As I am sure many addictions start, I was thinking—“this feels amazing, how can I stay here forever?”
I took my first trip abroad when I was 19, and ever since then, traveling has been a safe space. A liminal zone between everywhere and nowhere where I could escape the hum-drum of daily existence. Three years ago, I gave away the majority of my belongings and began to bounce around the world seasonally as a full-time adventurer. “I live at the Free Bird Hotel,” I said when people asked me about my itinerant lifestyle.
There are obvious downsides to the nomadic life—you don’t have a permanent home, the constant moving around and planning is exhausting, and it’s hard to build community and maintain relationships. But there is a deeper shadow side. Anything that floods our brain with happy-feeling chemicals is something to be used with thoughtfulness. We must understand our intentions.
Last year, I did a ceremony with a medicine woman who spoke about a common cycle with people who journey with ayahuasca, “they get to the air, and they want to stay in the air,” she said. She spoke about the trap of the peak experience—to want to stay on the mountaintop, in a state of exhilarated awe forever. I think this could apply to anyone who keeps chasing a “high” over and over again (whether it be taking hallucinogenics or traveling or falling in love) without taking a beat in between.
Everything can be a poison or a medicine, depending on our intention and our integration. I love traveling in the same way that I love psychedelic medicine—it’s a way to connect to my higher self. When you have a brain that is prone to existential depression, it’s easier to find meaning when you are face-to-face with a novel and exciting experience. Shifting our perspective is essential in order to break trances of rumination and change the stories we play in our mind. For the record, after my fabulous morning in Portugal, I never sent my scathing emails.
But the shadow side of non-stop traveling is also very real. It can be a way of avoiding normalcy, avoiding vulnerability, and a mechanism to keep your brain brimming with dopamine. It’s easy to feel like life is deep and rich with meaning while you are wandering through the Colosseum or eating lunch with the locals at a market in Nairobi. And social media allows you to package up your experience and prove how cool you are to the world! The distractions and constant physical movement can be a heavy armor—a shield that protects you from feeling or processing emotions. There is always the next bus to catch or the next Airbnb to to search for. Surely, you’ll feel better somewhere else.
After two and half years without a stable home, I committed to a one-year lease in Mexico City. Damn, let me tell you, it’s been beautiful and it’s also been uncomfortable. Staying still really forces you to face yourself and sit with the emotions that come up in this human experience. I have no plane ticket to a better place or fantasy of a superior life as a wine farmer in the Portuguese countryside or as a surfer girl on the Mexican coast. I’ve experienced all of these places and I know there is no where I can escape the human experience. It is just me here, sitting with myself, feeling everything that needs to be felt.* Traveling, in all of its glory and glamour, is really not so different from all of the other coping mechanisms we use. We have to constantly examine our intentions and find ways to sit with the icky feelings that come along with being human. This is not for nothing—when we sit with our restlessness, our boredom, and our emotions for long enough, there is deeper self-knowledge waiting for us on the other side. Our internal landscapes are just as interesting and profound as the geographic ones on the other side of the world.
I still believe in the magic and possibility of travel! When we start feeling stuck in the sticky mud of life, travel is an invitation, an opportunity to change how we are seeing the world. When I look back on photos, when I see myself posing in front of the Taj Mahal or getting ready to jump in the ocean to snorkel with whale sharks, I never think, wow! those were truly the best moments of my life. But I do think that those moments saved me. They reawakened my senses. They changed the lens through which I was viewing the world and lifted spells of depression. It wasn’t because those moments were better than my other moments—my morning rituals, a coffee with a friend, a dinner with my family. It was just because these moments of awe shook me awake and reminded me to pay attention. The challenge is always to bring this feeling into our daily lives. To realize that these experiences are not the most important ones we have in our lives, but they are the ones that can shake us awake so we can realize how valuable the whole human experience is in its spectrum.
Recently, I’ve decided to commit myself to an understated element of building an interesting life: contrast. I like the word contrast because it’s sharp and edgy, a crescent moon sliver against a pitch-black sky. I believe in contrast as art. Contrast as medicine. It is the in-between that gives us flavor. It is the stillness that makes traveling interesting, just as human connection makes moments of solitude feel sweet. There must be a pause in between notes of music for our brain to be able to hear a song. I realized that the life I want cannot be packed with peak experience after peak experience and non-stop movement. What I need is enough peak experiences to stay awake to the beauty of the human experience and enough stillness to sit with and accept my own shadow.
The best part about the art of contrast is that it completely defies all traditional advice-giving protocols. You’re the only person who knows what you need. Maybe you need more traveling or less traveling or more spinach or more chocolate cake? You are the guide and you are the teacher. I hope you build the contrast that you need to awaken your senses and to feel everything that comes with that.
Love,
Emily
*Now, I have developed a new coping mechanism of buying things to decorate my apartment. :)