“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” -Dagobert D. Runes.

I have a bitter tendency to demonize the familiar by claiming that there is nothing here for me. Once I’m out in the world, life will truly begin. There’s no beauty here, because it’s too close to home.  Excitement and happiness lie just outside the boundaries of this boxed-in reality!

We are all in constant forward motion on roads that do not, most likely, stretch out to the horizon in a linear fashion. There are bends and kinks and hills and valleys and we trample through them with our pasts chomping at our heels. And, that place that extends farther and farther into the distance behind us? Grows blurry and distorted as we pump our legs ever  faster into the elusive sunset? Familiar, ordinary, mundane. Home.

If you are anything like me, you are convinced that opportunity and thrill and relationships and potential novel inspiration (maybe this one is just me) are stashed away in exotic locations miles from where you came from. Home, where you can drive or bike blindfolded and still make it safely to the grocery story or your friend’s house. Home, where you’ve been to every single restaurant within a 10-mile radius. Where you know you’ll recognize at least five people on your walk through the neighborhood. Where every tree, every scratch in the sidewalk, and every slow-changing streetlight stay the same through each passing year. Reliably, tediously, monotonously.

And you would rather be anywhere else.

But the reality is that we spend the vast majority of our time in the place we call home. Travel is a luxury no matter how you slice it, and if we can’t find some sense of pleasure in the humdrum things, the daily things, the ordinary things, then we won’t find a whole lot of pleasure in our lives at all.

I like to try imagining my average, unremarkable town through a foreigner’s eyes. Perhaps it is not impressive or stately like New York, nor charming and quaint like London, but it is safe and tolerant and comfortable. In summer, the trees are viridescent and the seasonal flowers pop against a cloudless sky. The town is abuzz with ebullient, youthful energy as the little kids bike on training wheels and lick ice cream beside the park. It is its own bubble, one sheltered from the malicious kind of hatred or crime that those less fortunate than us may find themselves subject to. We are blessed for such a town, perhaps more so than we often understand.

When I’m on my short drive to work, the one that I often make up to three times a day, I play my favorite song that I have found is timed perfectly to the five (ish) minute commute. There can be perks to knowing routes like the back of your hand, and finding a song that fits flawlessly into an otherwise quiet, mindless drive is only one.

Additionally, there’s something sort of wonderful about walking into a restaurant and having the waiters address you by name or get your order down before you’ve even uttered a word. It’s not exotic or thrilling or extraordinary, but it is heartwarming, and you’re not going to find it 4,000 miles from home.

Even with all that you do know about the place from which you hail, there are always things you do not. Maybe we all just assume that because we’ve spent so many years in one place, all of its secrets automatically bubble up to the surface, and we can chalk it up to sheer prolonged exposure. No more need for exploring, I’ve already spent seventeen years here! It’s like going hunting, spending a few hours in the woods just plodding around, and then pretending to eat your invisible game for dinner. Don’t be a fake hunter. Don’t be a fake know-it-all in your town either. (Yikes, that was a farfetched analogy…)

My point is, the majority of our lives are spent subsisting on the ordinary, but maybe we can get through our routine days and our average experiences by making something extraordinary out of them.

Plus, you will become an expert traveler when you have learned to master a deep exploration of the most difficult territory of all: your own.