Wanderlust

I left Taiwan at age seven, and lived in the Philippines until I was 22, when I moved to the US. I lived in three different places in Taipei, three in the Philippines, two in Maryland, and two in California. So I think the longest I've ever stayed in one place is the eight or nine years in Mandaluyong, and the eight or nine here in Fremont.

Over the past few years, we thought it was probably time to buy a house, and started to save up for it. But on this previous vacation, an urge that had brewed for a couple of days came rushing out while we cooled our heels outside the Tate Modern museum in London, watching the Thames and fighting jetlag. An urge to leave it all behind and start over somewhere different.

I've always liked vacations for their time-warping quality. I feel like the whole world continues to move along its path while I've detached in observation, as if I've become timeless during those few days. This one was a bit different, and is probably mixed in with some mid-life crisis of sorts. I've long thought that aging was best represented as a narrowing of options, in the sense that as a child you could be almost anything, but as you go to college, graduate, and move from job to job, your path becomes more and more defined over the years. At some point, you are basically the one thing that you are, until the end. So this might really be an urge to fight nature, to create paths that are as wide as they were when I was young. A way to put off stagnation, decay, and therefore death?

I'm actually pretty happy with where I am, and I'm probably too responsible to actually do anything about it, yet the wanderlust tickles.