What defines a traveller? Someone who roams around the world? Maybe? But isn’t that something a tourist does too, roam around the world?

Go to all the places of beauty, get rooms in expensive hotels, eat expensive meals at luxurious restaurants, pack suitcases well in advance, have your whole tour planned, take pictures at famous spots, and have tickets booked well in advance? Isn’t that a tourist?

What makes a traveller different? What makes their ideas sound so crazy to people? What do they do differently that people call them travellers and not tourist?

Wanderlust?

Well, not the Instagram caption or Snapchat story captioned wanderlust, but probably someone who doesn’t care about where they are headed next. Someone who cannot stay at once place. Someone who just leaves on the very next flight to somewhere no one knows and goes there to meet the local people and stay at the cheapest motel they can find.

Someone who doesn’t know the tourist spots of the country they are in, someone who doesn’t travel with luxury, someone who doesn’t eat at expensive restaurants but eats with the locals, someone who doesn’t care about the tourist spots or about carrying a camera with them, even if they do it is not to click their own pictures, it is just to get lost in the crowd.

Someone who loves to eat the local food, someone who mixes up with the locals or maybe even shares a room with them. Someone who doesn’t book tourist vehicles or doesn’t take a cab but rents a bike, a motorcycle or a car and roams around the entire city, state, and country without stopping and without getting tired.

They don’t stop at tourist spots, they stop at places they would love to stop at, adore the beauty and then just hope to the next country. Never having a home to return to one. They are not people of a country or of a city, they are people of the world. They don’t have a home, the world is their home.

A tourist spends money for calming down, a traveller travels to calm the wanderlust.

A tourist tours, a traveller wanders.

Have you ever thought of how easy life would have been if you could just pack your bags up, switch off your phones, and just leave? No goodbyes, no phone calls, no notes left behind? Just a one-way ticket to somewhere in the world. You don’t know where you are headed, you don’t know where you are going next, you don’t know when will you return, if ever, what you are going to do, you just leave.

You just leave everything behind and walk away. There are people who are going to miss you for a few days and then never think about you again. There are going to be assignments that you were supposed to fulfill but you don’t care anymore.

You were about to get promoted, you were expecting good results, you were earning good money, you were probably at the apex of your career but you were done with it.

We talk about birds being lucky to fly anywhere they want. We talk about them being free from any responsibility and can make their nest wherever they want. Just stop for a moment and look around you, what is stopping you from being a bird?

The birds could make a nest anywhere they want, but once they make a nest, they return to it every single night, but the idea of freedom lures us to being a bird.

Trust me, you are a bird too, just break free of your nest and fly. Fly wherever you want and whenever you want. Never make a nest again, to never return. Just migrate with the seasons.

I did something wrong, something really really wrong. Something I never wanted to do, but then you have your breaking points, right? You can only stand it until a point, especially when you know you are not wrong.

But that doesn’t make what I did any correct, this is just an excuse, and now I might have to live with the stain forever. When everything was about to get right, when I expected life to take a full U-turn in the next few months, I messed up.

I had my priorities, I had my rules, I had my lines, and I broke them all to be something I used as a swear word. I became one of those that I hated, and because of them. But now, I’m one of them, and what’s the difference between them and me? Am I not what people hate? Were they not created by the like of them, just like me?

Now that I thought about its consequences, I think I might have gone too far, I think I might have done something I never wanted to do.

I don’t see a way out either, the only thing that I think I can do is apologize, and stop what I did immediately. Does that make sense?

Will the world forgive me for who I am? Will I forgive myself? Well maybe, well maybe not.

The only thing I know right now is that I need to stop.

It is not just a beverage, it is not just a something you need to get out of your sleep, it is not just another cup of milk or water with some chemical, it is an agent of souls.

Wherever you go, you’ll find different coffees. Someone likes it strong, someone likes it mild and someone is all about the aroma. But whatever coffee you have, there is always something special about it. Something special about the coffee, something special about the one making it and something special about the moment.

Coffees are not made without a reason, it is always an occasion if it isn’t the coffee makes it one. It is all in the moment.

The aroma, the taste, always takes you back in time. Takes you to the times when you had that coffee. It could be a trip up to the highest motorable road, where you had a cup by the road, with your biking gang. It could be a familiar taste in a different country, a taste that reminds you of home.

If could be a different aroma, something that doesn’t smell like coffee. But it could be the same cup, the same settings, and the same aroma you smelled, when you were here the last time, looking into her eyes. It could the last sip and it reminds of your hostel, where you ran out of milk and everyone got just one sip and worked the entire night.

A lot happens over coffee. People come together, people split apart, companies are formed, companies are taken over, deals are cracked, startups get investments, someone is missed and someone feels loved. It is not coffee, it is an agent of souls.

Dear Diary,

I haven’t seen you in a very long time, but I might just see you again really soon. There wasn’t much to write about, to be honest. I have written a lot lately, but there wasn’t much to write.

Nothing happened over the past few weeks, month, or years was it? I don’t even remember when I last saw you. I just know that I haven’t seen you in a while.

I wrote down a lot when you were away. Sometimes for me, sometimes for people around me, and sometimes for work, but there wasn’t anything to treasure. Something I would write today, and years later, look at it and smile.

There wasn’t anything worth troubling you. You are in your bed and stay there, in your deep slumber, because there still isn’t anything to write about, but I might write soon. I got this tingling feeling this afternoon that there is going to be some turn of events.

It was quiet for a very long time and nothing had gone wrong in the past few months and nothing great happened in the past few years. So, I believe it is time now, the silence before the storm needs to end. The storm is imminent, but there is still time, I can sense it but I cannot see it.

I will see you again, soon after the storm ends and if I survive it. I might see you again, soon, maybe.

Love.

Life is all about now. It is not a few hours or weeks ahead, it is not a few months or years ahead, it is now. It is in the moment.

Everything is now. There is nothing that is far ahead, there is no tomorrow. You can either battle now to get your dreams or you can just wait and see your time slip by.

We all know what we truly want. Something that we buried deep inside our hears, something we don’t tell anyone. Pen it down, understand what you really want and then run after it. Run until you don’t get it.

Listen to the calls of your heart and follow them because, in this world where everyone owes at least something to someone, the calls of your heart are the only thing that are truly yours. Something that belongs only to you.

Go, get out, live a life, you won’t regret it. When it comes to an end, the only thing that you are ever going to regret is not going after what you really wanted.

So don’t be a “normal”, be the story you always heard from people, be the story that you want to tell the world. Be you.

For the first time in months, I’ve felt like I have nothing to do. Have you ever felt that there’s no burden on you?

There’s nothing to read, nothing to work on in games, no new dramas, no new TV shows, no need to read newspapers, no books lying around on my bed. There is absolutely nothing that I need to do.

Out of habit, I still woke up at 8 in the morning, walked around the house searching for something to read. I did find the magazine issue I bought a few days back, but then I remembered that I don’t need it anymore. And in the afternoon I was on games again, but there was no pressure on me to win or perform, I was just playing.

In the evening, I logged out of the game account and then regretted having wasted the entire afternoon playing games. And then I looked at my left, where there’s usually a stack of books. It wasn’t there. Then I remembered, I dumped it this morning, I don’t need it anymore. I was free and logged into games again.

Have you ever felt, that there’s nothing for you to do? Everything you wanted to do or was on your to-do list has been crossed out?

Now there is only one thing to do, wait. Wait for the results, wait for something new to turn up, wait while you build yourself.

A lot of us at time feel alone, left out and not being worth someone who we would love to have around us. And in an attempt to get someone, we often tend to fall for desperate moves.

The problem is, that we think being around someone one of influence, or someone we look upto is the key to be better in life. Or maybe getting close to someone we admire or adore, might let us have that extra motivation we need to do a lot better.

This is turning out to be a problem for all of us. While social media is also doing its part in backing our inferiority complexions.

However, the truth is, that you don’t actually need people to be happy or to do better in life. And you definitely don’t need those people who are the reason why you can’t smile through the day.

Those who want to be with you will be with you always, those who don’t are never going to be no matter what. It might be hard to let go of some people, but clinging onto someone only kills your chances to be with someone else.

Someone who might be able to add more value to your life, that what your lost love would ever do.