A Board Called Wanderlust and Where to Pin Your Hopes

I have a Pinterest board called Wanderlust  (lame, I know). And when I created that board I literally had a lust for travel.  I wanted to see the world and all the wonders it had to offer.  The sights, places and spaces that I had only ever read of or seen in movies – I had to see them and experience their wonder and I was prepared to do whatever it took to do so. 

So last week I was looking through that Pinterest board after a month of travelling through Europe.  And I was shocked that many of the things which I pinned in absolute ignorance, I have now seen and done.  Even random things like the Abbey Bookshop in Paris – I pinned it because I love any cute bookshops but then one day, totally by accident, I stumbled upon it down a side alley in Paris.

There is something else that I pinned on my Wanderlust board.  A quote by St. Augustine (though one can never be sure about these quotes and who they belong to).  It goes like this:

I read that, and I was determined to read all the pages.  I felt like my life would not be complete or fulfilled, that I could never be content, that my life would not mean anything unless I had travelled the world and seen all that it had to offer.

And so, despite being a rather nervous, high-strung person who does not like change and who is useless at directions and map reading, I set out on a month long trip through Europe.  I am not brave person but I am rather stupid.

I have seen the Berlin Wall, the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, had lunch in the shade of the Arc de Triomphe, gone up into the Austrian Alps, cycled through Copenhagen, eaten white sausage and drunk beer for breakfast in Germany, sat at little cafes in Florence, suntanned in Nice, heard the Pope giving his Sunday message from the Vatican, eaten the famous Sacher cake out its beautiful box in Vienna and gone shopping along the Champs Elysees.

A dream come true.  Or so it should have been.  This was my dream.  To travel, to see the world, to visit these magical places.  And I am grateful that I have done it.  I am glad that it is done because now I know what I did not know before.  Travelling is overrated and it certainly does not make your life 'fulfilled'.

  

I saw great things, I did great things.  I had fun.  But the more I saw, the less it meant.  I got good at looking but stopped actually seeing.  I wandered through the Vatican museums, one scorching hot day in Rome and realized that if I had never seen a fresco of Mary and the baby Jesus or hundreds of white statues of Roman nobles, my life would have been okay - it might in fact have been fuller.  It was as if all this ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ was actually emptying me out of any beauty and joy.

I am a small person.  I grew up in small towns and cities in South Africa.  And there I find myself with the rich and famous, suntanning on the rocky beaches of Nice.  I certainly got to read the pages of the book of the world.  However, I do not think these are the best pages. I do not think they are the most interesting or exciting.  I do not think that they are the pages I will treasure forever and go back and read and reread. Because the more I saw and the further I travelled, the more I longed for home.  For the norm, for the average and every day.  I longed for the real world, my world, not the gaudy, tourist attractions that although beautiful and awe-inspiring, meant nothing to me.

I would have traded this month of sightseeing and gallivanting for a holiday at my gran’s house in Durban where we watch stupid BBC comedies with my grandpa and get yelled at by my grandma for sitting in her chair.  I would trade the hundreds of famous art works by Michelangelo and Da Vinci for a visit to the Ann Bryant Art Gallery with its old buildings and artwork by local artists.  I would exchange all the Roman archaeology and statues for that stupid Coeleocanth at the East London museum.  And you know why?  Because all that is real.  It is my world. 

And maybe I am ungrateful.  I know I am.  Maybe I am just ill-suited to travel – the tourists, the queues, the foreign food and strange places, sleeping in filthy hostels and getting lost on the metro – I know now that I am.  But I also know that I have learned a huge lesson in wisdom. 

That famous places and objects and buildings and people and spaces - they are not what the world is about.  And if you do not get to see them, you have certainly not read only one page.  Our stories of the world are written wherever and however we live.  And you read every page no matter where or how you live.  You can make the world, your world, full of grace and beauty whether or not you see the Vienna Opera House or visit the Shakespeare and Co. Bookshop. 

So travel or don’t travel.   It actually makes no difference.  Contentment and happiness is found in the situation you’re in.  Not in a street in Paris or a museum in Rome.  Don’t ‘pin’ your hopes on that Pinterest board. Don’t pin your hopes on anything on this earth. Because as I discovered, it is all meaningless. Pin your hopes on the Author of the book of the world.  Because He can fill all your pages with glorious dramas and simple tales of life and love.