When I was younger, I never wanted to travel or leave home, I was comfortable and warm inside my shell, in my dreams and plans for life. There was only staying in my hometown for the rest of my life. I genuinely couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It was beyond comprehension. Finally, when I was 20, through a series of random and unexpected events, I had the opportunity to move away from home and I took it. I left my hometown of Melbourne and I moved to Brisbane for my undergraduate degree. Back then, it was the scariest experience of my life. Everything was new, foreign, and daunting. Since that time, I have lived in 5 cities and travelled to over 40 countries, that first move to Brisbane changed me forever and I haven’t looked back since, I have had some of the most amazing experiences of my life, met absolutely incredible people that I could not have imagined existed. I learnt that at any new place there is potential for genuine incredible connections, anywhere in the world at any moment there is someone to share a moment, a night, a week or a lifetime with, they were just waiting for me to meet them. Unfortunately in life there is always a trade-off to everything, whether or not we like to admit it, it exists.

What is the trade-off of moving and travelling? There are many to be truthful. The one that I found hardest is meeting wonderful people, building relationships and then leaving all of that to start all over again. It hurts. Every. God damn. Time. Maybe this affects me more than others because I am an extrovert and for me it has always been about the people. The people are what I remember when I reminiscence fondly about all my wonderful memories. It wasn’t the sites, the food or the history; it starts and ends with people. Humans are social creatures, even the most introverted introvert has their people and maybe a cross I must bear with my extroverted personality type is making immense amounts of these connections wherever I go and having to live with the consequences of one day moving on, leaving all those people behind in an instant, in a moment you lose so many special people. People you relied on, shared good and bad times with, people who supported you and you supported them. Now in an instant you are building new relationships yet again from scratch. Sadly, it has been challenging because the times in my life when I was surrounded by the same people, everyday, when we had honest intentions in our relationships with each other, those times are when I felt happiest and at peace in life. Leaving that behind isn’t easy. I accept this fate every time I move or travel in life.

It is a unique set of circumstances and emotions when travelling. When people travel, they are free of any commitments and burdens; they are in great spirit and are happy to have a break from normal life. This combination of feel-good emotions and free-time is the perfect recipe for building a lifelong connection in just one day, something I got accustomed to both experiencing and abandoning on my round-the-world trip in 2018. It is when I travel I experience the shadow of sadness that looms over you in the hours after saying goodbye to someone truly special. In some weird way, the shadow is a reminder of what you knew deep down all along. You won’t have that unique experience ever again. You may never (and most probably won’t) see that person again, as I learnt in the worst of fashions. This then begs the obvious question. Is it worth it to travel at all? Is it worth it to move? Is it worth it to keep experiencing this sadness time and time again?

To answer this question, one must consider the idea of yin and yang. Yin and yang is the ancient Chinese philosophy that describes the powers of opposing forces working in unison to define experience. Symbolised by a circle that is half black and half white with a small circle of opposing colour sitting deep in the heart of each half of the circle. When I experience the sorrow that accompanies me post-travels, I know I would not be experiencing the yin (sorrow) without the yang (happiness) first. As it was so expertly summaried in a South Park scene that enters my mind in these moments. To feel that sorrow is to know you felt a joyous happiness prior to it, something indeed worth celebrating. If you were to ask me, was I better off not travelling at all? Was I better off not moving all those times? Should I have stayed in my hometown, safe from all these emotions? You know the answer deep down inside you is no, it is self-evident from your experience of life.

While I must experience the woe of leaving, I would not trade that for the joy and memories I have gained along the way, not in a million years. I am who I am, in large part, because of said experiences. Ultimately I learnt, you can live your whole life scared of experiencing the rollercoaster of yins and yangs it offers, hiding away in your room or you can pick up your sword and head into battle, very well knowing that the sadness comes from a place of joy and wonderful moments that make the sadness worth enduring. As Bubbles put it: “I’m sad but at the same time, I’m really happy that something can make me that sad, it’s like, it makes me feel alive you know? It makes me feel human”.

So I guess the first question you should ask is why? The reason we do things is very important and the first question you should ask of anything in your life or someone else’s is why. The why can help you understand the foundation of any action that someone is taking in their life. It gives you a better understanding of that person, what their values are and what is important to them. So, the question still remains unanswered, why am I writing a blog? Why is this something that I wanted to do and why make it public for all to see? I think like many things in life the answer is multi-factorial.

First and simply, my mind is convoluted, it needs a release, it has thoughts running around all day, non-stop and putting them in writing is a catharsis, it’s therapy for me, it’s a way to put my thoughts on paper (well kind of, you get it though) and it allows me to be free of the words, having released them upon the world. It is also a creative outlet for me, I have never really had a real creative hobby or outlet and I believe it is important for people to have that in their lives and I’ve decided to make this mine.

Secondly, I would like to document aspects of my life and my journey. Haven’t you ever read something you wrote at one stage of your life, maybe when you were a kid, or from 10 years ago and got a glimpse of what your life used to be like? You got to see how your brain worked at a certain time and the thoughts you had back then. It’s a cool process and it also allows you to see the way your life has changed, the way your thoughts have progressed and the way that you’ve progressed as a human. I want to create something that I can look back on in years and comprehend my journey over the years, the struggles, the joys, the lessons and the rollercoaster.

Thirdly, is the challenge and discomfort of putting myself out there in a public space, putting my thoughts and my life out there for the world to see. One of the most important lessons I learnt in life was about challenging myself and going outside of my comfort zone and anytime I have done that (even if I faily miserably) at least I know that I took the risk and tried and I learnt something along the way. People may hate or laugh but this is for me and my journey and a step I am taking in becoming the best person I can be. There is also something so freeing about putting yourself out there and being vulnerable, I can’t really explain it but if you’ve tried it, you would understand exactly what I am talking about.

Fourthly and lastly and maybe most importantly is the potential these words or words I write can have on people’s lives. Now I know I am not some guru that will transform people’s lives but I hope that it can help maybe even one person. If I can do that then I am happy, one person helped is infinitely more than zero (just ask the mathematicians, or don’t and take my word for it) and whatever failure or embarassment I get from the blog will automatically be negated if just that one person can benefit.
To be honest with you, for a while, I told myself that I am not worthy to be trying to help people improve their lives, I am not the right person because I make mistakes, I do not live a perfect life by any means. Then I was reminded that I have been through things that people can relate to and maybe some people can benefit from the lessons I have garnered over the years and maybe people can apply those lessons to their own lives. I have learnt a lot from other people, their words, be it spoken or written, and it would be a shame to not try to do the same in the hope that I can have that positive impact on someone that other people’s words had on me. At the end of the day that’s what it is all about, people learning lessons in their lives and passing those lessons on to those willing to learn. I would be foolish to say I am even anywhere near close to being where I want to be or who I want to be as a person. I will say this though, you now have a choice, you can come along this journey with me and learn with me from my past, my mistakes and my future, or you can not. If you do, I can tell you from now it won’t be a straightforward journey (is anything ever?) but hopefully it will be a ride worth taking, full of twists and turns, ups and downs, crying and laughing and much more, so let’s begin, let’s take a voyage into the wonderful mind of Bavly. Welcome friend, strap yourself in.