The concept of “wanderlust,” a strong desire for travel, fills our Pinterest boards and news-feeds. It shapes our Instagram posts, our conversations, and our futures. More than anything though, it upsets and discontents our hearts, which is ironic since the most prescribed cure for unhappiness is a road trip or backpacking vacation.
Don’t know what to study or where to attend college? Take a year off to explore. Going through a rough breakup? Cross-country road trip it is. Need to discover yourself or gain perspective? Take a week-long missions trip.
We wander, which leads to more wandering, and more wandering, as the insatiable desire for travel becomes a drug we cannot live without. One location is never enough. Trusting travel to satisfy us means that we must always be somewhere else. We pour time and money into experiencing the world, but find ourselves empty and unfulfilled, in search of the next big thing.
I know this because it happened to me. The day I learned there was more to the world than my house on a farm, I wanted to explore it. Western New York would never be enough, and Houghton offered me the opportunity to squash the “travel bug” with a semester abroad in England. My cohort and I saw historical sites, tasted new cuisine, traveled on the Tube, visited Ireland, and spent three months chasing what I believed was the key to happiness.
Then we came back, back to cows, crickets, and gravel roads. The open fields and dark woods that had fueled my childhood creativity became obstacles to experience. What was I supposed to discover in an empty cornfield? Boredom struck hard and fast, and with no car and no money, there could be no adventure. My purpose and happiness had become so invested in a location that when I was not somewhere interesting, I did not completely know myself.
To combat my post-London angst, I tried a 
“micro-adventure” challenge, which encourages you to find a tiny adventure within a 10 mile radius every day for a week. On the second day, I visited a park in my neighborhood, and as I watched little children run around on the open grass, I found what is lost in a travel-centered world: imagination. The children did not need a real mountain to climb or castle to defend, they were already there in the middle of an open park.
Adventure is about perspective, not location. A plane may take you a thousand miles from home, but if you never leave the hotel room, does it matter where you are? Attitude can make the trees in my backyard the Amazon rainforest, a school playground an ancient fortress and the Sahara Desert just a big sandbox.
Of course, traveling is not necessarily wrong. In fact, the love of traveling stems from the same healthy desire for exploration and discovery we need to change our perspectives. However, the thrill of travel cannot be what we build our lives or our cultures on. If it is, we risk missing out on the beauty of everyday life, as well as defining a well-lived life, and well-traveled life. Purpose and satisfaction are not found in a different location. They are found in being content with where we are, because until we can delve into where we are, we will never truly appreciate where we are going.