You Can Have It All, Just Not At The Same Time
In my most recent virtual therapy session, I found myself explaining to my therapist that I wanted to be able to travel freely and also be grounded somewhere. From what it sounded it like, it seemed like she was trying to persuade me otherwise. I think she thinks that my wanderlust is me running away from something she has yet to discover. That’s when I told her matter of factly, “You know, I believe I can have it all.” She didn’t say much more. Our session was nearly done and I don’t think either of us wanted to open up a new can of worms.
A few days later though, I was listening to a cheesily titled self-help book about manifestation on my free library app called “Calling in the One”, when the narrator said these words, “You can have it all, just not at the same time.” I immediately rewound it so that I could jot it down in the notes section of my phone along with all the other million-dollar ideas and quality insights that pop into my mind never to be read again. Except the universe wasn’t ready for me to forget this phrase so hastily.
A few days more passed and I found myself in Loulé, Portugal (where I still am) volunteering at an animal rescue center called Animal Rescue Algarve. Before bed last night I was chatting with my roommate, a 41-year-old Belgian woman who had been volunteering at the organization for a few months already, about traveling and living the life of a wanderer. That’s when she began opening up to me about the inner torment she was feeling about having to return to Belgium in a few months. “The thought of sitting at a desk working a 9 to 5 sounds dreadful,” she moaned. “When I’m home,” she continued, “my need for community is fulfilled, but when I’m traveling, my need for adventure and freedom is fulfilled.” I thought I could sense a twinge of sadness or confusion lingering beneath her words, but that’s when she perked up and said, “I’ve come to realize that I can have it all, just not at the same time.”
A big grin appeared on my face. Though I hadn’t felt an instant connection to her, I suddenly felt like I’d found a kindred spirit. In fact, one of the reasons I chose to come on this adventure was so that I could meet people who shared my mercurial nature, whimsical spirit, and undying wanderlust. My therapist and most of my friends in Berlin (and worldwide) loved to travel but they either had kids, plants, partners, steady jobs, property, (or all of the above) to look after and couldn’t just freely roam around the planet whenever they wanted to as I could. And so I felt like I hadn’t found anyone who could truly relate to this deep desire of mine to be everything, everywhere, all at once. Until now. Here I was in sunny Portugal sharing a trailer with someone who was as thinly tethered to the place she called home as I was, and who was also practicing arranging her life in a way that would satisfy her conflicting needs for stability and for wanderlust.
For the first time in a long time, I am no longer partnered. Though I haven’t quite figured out how to set up my life, I feel that I am getting closer to figuring it out. I’ve pretty much accepted that it won’t be a conventional setup - and that’s ok because I can (and I will) have it all… a dog (or two) nuzzled up next to me, sun on my face, friends who have become family surrounding me, a partner with a kindred wanderlust spirit by my side, the ability to drop everything and volunteer around the world for causes that ignite my soul or visit family in familiar, far off lands just so I can laugh with them under the same roof, and maybe even a cute kid bouncing around on my lap… I just might not be able to have it all at the same time.
Oh, life - how beautiful and strange you truly are.
