travel, daily life, attitude
the beginning and end of a journey
When will the journey begin? It is often said that from the moment you buy a plane ticket. So when is the end of the trip? Will it be the moment the returning plane lands? When our mother tongue comes and the smell of familiar food comes to our noses, when the laundry and daily routine of going to work are just around the corner, we realize that the trip is over. After a day passes and a week passes, we become regular people as if we were travelers. Looking for the next destination. But isn’t it a little strange? A life that holds out a boring routine, looking only at a moment’s journey.
In the winter of 2008, he quit his job and went on a long, non-promising journey. A time when quitting or long-term travel was more common than now. Friends around me said I was brave enough to stop everything and leave. But when I left, what was difficult was not “leaving my daily life.” After the long trip, it was a “return” to my daily routine. It took more courage to grease this routine and live it again when faced with a routine that had been put on hold for a while with nothing changed.
I’ve always wondered: Will the happy-looking travelers I met on the road still have happy faces in their back-to-back daily lives? Do you think I’m living with something similar to before my trip? Or is he living a completely different life? Some people are so sure as soon as the trip is over. ‘My life has changed completely since I traveled.’ ‘My English improved a lot and I met my life partner!’ I wasn’t. When asked what changed the most after the trip, he said, “Uh… Well, what is it? All the money I’ve saved is gone?” There was nothing more specific to answer.
Shortly after returning from the trip, I didn’t want to share the experience with people in writing or words. Because even I couldn’t immediately clearly see how the experience of traveling affected my life. Many of the travel books that had been pouring out around that time emphasized that “there is freedom to stop and leave everyday life.” Nobody talked about things like ‘life back after a trip.’ I needed to talk about my daily life facing an unstable future, with my saved money and my accumulated career cut off.
How will you record your trip?
Why do they travel? How will I record the trip in my own way? This has been my talk for a long time. I’ve been on short and long trips for the last 20 years and I want to continue. After a year-long trip, I had to live my daily life in Seoul again to find the answer for myself. A satisfying life was not created by chance in ‘traveling’. After returning with the experience of traveling, I made it in my daily life in ‘After Travel’. The daily life records whether the attitudes experienced as travelers are sustainable in everyday life. a routine reminder of the attitude of travel I liked it better than writing or writing. The times when life was before records piled up day by day and I began to be satisfied with my daily routine.
He moved to a place that resembled Thailand’s longest-stay mountain village, continued the hobbies taught by travel in his daily life, and continued to do reckless things in his daily life, returning to the recklessness of going out to the Berlin market to earn his living expenses. I changed my job and did my favorite things with enough time that the changed job brought me. Recalling the times when I was comforted by the endless stars in the desert, I took myself tired from my daily life to nature and comforted me every day.
It’s been ten years since I came back to Korea. What’s the biggest change before and after the trip? If you ask, now you can answer clearly.It’s my daily routine. Before I went on a long trip, I asked myself, “Why should I continue living on this land for the sins of being born by accident in a land I didn’t choose?” Everything in my daily life was full of complaints, but not now. I live in Seoul, the city of my choice, after staying in many countries and cities that I wanted to live in. I live in the same city as I used to but now I live in a completely different attitude.
Is it really possible, like traveling in daily life?
One of the books I always bring up with me is ‘Discussion.” This book compares the process of academic exploration to travel. The furthest journey in the world is from head to chest to chest, from chest to foot. True learning is not about keeping knowledge in one’s head, but about feeling it with one’s heart and practicing it with action. Wouldn’t it be similar to the process in which travel experiences are not simply consumed and become meaningful experiences?
To change one’s life by constantly summoning the moments of one’s journey into one’s daily life, not just in writing or photographs. To pile up the experience and attitude of traveling closely in one’s daily life. That’s what I think is the ultimate purpose of the trip. No matter how long you’ve been on a long journey, if your daily routine doesn’t change, it’s like eating, sleeping, and consuming in a different place in the background. So I think the farthest journey in the world is ‘starting from an unsatisfactory routine and arriving at a satisfying one.’
You mean everyday life like a trip? Easier said than done, does that make sense? There will be people who do. I wish my little experiences in this book could be proof. The reason why I made the travel story into a book is because I want to continue my daily life as evidence of this public record. And I want to speak with this book. Until we arrive at a satisfactory routine, our journey must continue. I hope this book will be a strength for everyone who lives in confusion today amid the gap between travel and daily life.
The book is a record of how “A Year’s Journey” has since taken root in the “10 Years’ Daily Life” and has changed lives, with “A Record of Travel” and “A Record of Daily Life” intersecting under the same theme.