The World is a Book? Sure. But I Might Be on a Different Chapter Right Now.
If the world were a book, and if the act of travel were equivalent to flipping pages, then yeah, I guess if you live and die in the same town, maybe you’ve only read a page. Or a paragraph. Or, depending on your corner of the world, perhaps just one tiny word.
But also — how big is this damn book?
Are we talking coffee table tome? A choose-your-own-adventure with wormholes and forbidden footnotes? Is it written in Latin, Sanskrit, memes, and military-industrial complex contracts?
There are chapters I do not want to read.
I don’t want to accidentally flip to the UAE and land in a place where queer people like me are outlawed. Or get stuck in the Russia section, where being American isn’t precisely a perk these days. I’m brave sometimes — when I have to be — but when I don’t have to be, when there’s a choice?
I usually freeze.
Or sleep.
And lately, I’ve been sleeping a lot.
I’d like to believe I’m sleeping because I’m processing.
Because healing is hard, and it takes a lot of subconscious energy to reparent yourself through twenty, thirty, forty years of buried emotion. That’s the noble interpretation. The other, less romantic one? I’m sleeping to escape. Because feeling things is new and intense, and it’s constant. It’s like I suddenly opened the book not to a travel chapter, but to an internal monologue that never shuts off.
Plot twist: it’s mine.
This week, I was supposed to be in Australia.
The visa didn’t come through.
So instead, I stayed in my apartment and cracked open a different kind of passport — the one inside me. Met all my parts: the protector. The pixie. The rebel teen. The harsh critic. The lonely baby. The trauma. The sassy Buddha (my personal favorite). Loving Kindness, too.
That one’s been saving my ass lately.
There’s this meditation I do when the dark seeps in: I am loving kindness.
Just that, on repeat. I first heard it in a Ram Dass documentary — he said it, just like that, and then: “pass through the veil.” I don’t know what veil he meant, exactly. But when I say I am loving kindness to myself over and over, I feel something start to soften. I begin to believe I might deserve love, not from someone else, but from me.
Wild, right?
So, back to that quote — The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. I get the sentiment. I do. And, sure, travel is beautiful, expansive, and perspective-shifting. I love it. I want more of it. But this idea that staying put means you’re ignorant? That you’ve barely read? It feels unfair.
A little smug.
Because what if you’ve read deeply instead of widely? What if your chapter is one of rootedness? What if you had everything you needed right there in that single paragraph?
That’s a story I want to hear.
Me? I still want to travel. Still want to read more chapters. Still curious about the landscapes both inside and outside. Still trying to understand how the hell to hold all of this — the grief, the growth, the sleepiness, the shame, the kindness.
And some days are grey. Some are Tuesday levels of sparkle.
And some days?
Some days I write all this down, to remind myself that yes, even when I’m not flipping pages, I’m still in the story.
Still learning.
Still worthy.
Still loving.
Still here.