Home. There are more travelers than you think. Billions of us make the journey home every year. You see those images of the enormous herds of wilderbeest charging across the Serengetti. The almost futile attempts by salmon to charge back up the river swimming against the currents and trying to jump up waterfalls. That’s us. Every year in almost every country in the world, humans participate in the biggest human migrations on this planet. On Chinese New Year more than 200 million people, pick up there bags, uproot their lives for a few days and return to their parents homes to become children again.
Think about it, that’s almost a fifth of the population of China who leave the place where they are living and working to return home. The same story plays out at different dates throughout the year in every country in the world. Thanks Giving, Idul Fitri, Christmas, Navo Barsho; each and every festival is a testament to the power of the concept of home. The familiarity of a location that we know well and the people who make that place special, but it takes time and maturity to realize that.
As a child I was never happy with my home. I wanted to be somewhere different, anywhere in fact. It was and probably always will be a case of the grass is always greener. The people living in big cities dream of the countryside, while the people in the country dream of life in the city. A few of us take this one step further and spend our time simply dreaming of other countries. Enthralled by pictures in the National Geographic, I imagined the adventures that I could have in different places, in other countries, where you could catch exotic sounding diseases like Yellow Fever.
I’m 30 now and it’s taken a log of time to realize just how great home was and is. Every year I make my annual migration to England. I return to a place where I am happy to visit, surrounded by my friends and family.
If you are planning your next journey or dying to leave your home, take a deep breath, sit back and appreciate what you have at the moment. Your time will come, there are adventure awaiting you in the big wide world, so make sure to appreciate what you have. If so many people make the journey home every year, then there has to be something special about the place where you live.
