Lately, (Krish) was talking with a client, Allan, who was saying how much he hated the mundane conventional life and felt a strong pull for adventure. He is wealthy and highly successful in his business, he frequently takes motorcycle adventures, and ski holidays. But this doesn’t satisfy his deeper longing. He feels that he is missing something in his life and comes to Krish to help him figure out what it is.
Lawrence’s situation, on the other hand, is very different from Alan’s. He has spent a lot of time in therapy working on his childhood wounds, but it is difficult for him to venture out into the world. He has always struggled to make money or take risks to express or assert himself because he is terrified of criticism and being humiliated. People and the world in general frighten him so he spends a lot of time isolated in his home playing video games.
There is a word in German and English called; wanderlust – It means our longing for adventure and exploration and getting away from what is familiar and known to us. It’s a feeling of longing for adventure and expansion and moving into the unknown.
Most often when someone talks about wanderlust, it is about traveling and exploring the world. We call this the outer wanderlust, where it’s about exploring and expressing our creativity, meeting new people, traveling and exposing ourselves to new and different cultures and experiences, and it can also include sporting adventures, financial ventures and other challenges in the outside world. It involves adventure and risk.
The second is the inner wanderlust. It has to do with opening to vulnerability, to our fear, and insecurity, recognizing and letting go of our control strategies, our narcissism, and our ideas of how we and others should be, and risking to find out who we really are. Practically, it might include opening deeper to love, finding and speaking our truth, going against convention, and finally, finding deep spiritual meaning to our life. It includes investigating our upbringing and conditioning and finding the courage to live in a way that is in tune with our nature.
On our individual journey toward a full life, it is helpful to consider both of these two aspects of “wanderlust.” If we are not giving energy to and exploring both, something will feel empty or incomplete.
Some of us, because of our nature and childhood experiences, have a much easier time with the outer world, but without exploring the inner world, which includes our fears and insecurities, life will eventually begin to feel empty and meaningless. Others, may have done a lot of inner work and be comfortable with feeling fear and insecurity, and being vulnerable, but be terrified of taking risks in the outer world.
Without discovering and exploring both of these adventures, our life will not be as fulfilling, joyful and abundant as it can be.
Let’s explore some examples where clients have faced their wanderlust.
A client of ours, Alex, is highly successful in the material world. But he has been unable to find a partner longer than a few months at a time, basically because it wasn’t a high priority for him. But now, as he gets older, he feels that having an intimate partner is important enough that he wants to work toward creating and sustaining this aspect of his life. As courageous as he has been in the outer world, he realizes that he has not been courageous enough to face his fears of opening deeply to someone. Now he is embarking on the inner adventure which in his case involves finally facing his fear of intimacy.
The deep fears of intimacy that most of us have to face at some point if we want to have a more fulfilling life are:
1. The fear of losing oneself
2. Facing our insecurities and shame
3. Facing our fears of being invaded
4. Facing our fears of abandonment.
For Alex, it is mostly the last two because he was raised by an unavailable and punitive mother. It takes a lot of courage for him to begin to face these fears; to admit them after having covered them up for many years with constantly changing partners and excitement.
Here a few more examples of different people’s “wanderlust”:
Michael recently became the head of a medium size production company with 20 employees. He struggles with being clear in his direction and setting limits because he wants everyone to like him. As a result, he is aware that a few of his workers are clearly taking advantage of this weakness by spending long hours in the breakroom and chatting among themselves. When he notices this happening, rather than asserting his leadership, he apologizes and minimizes their behavior. Then when he comes home, he is so angry that he feels like destroying the furniture. We are working with his fear of asserting himself, feeling how it is when someone doesn’t like or criticizes him, and slowly letting go of his default defense of being a pleaser.
Daniela is an attractive 42-year-old woman who has been married for ten years and has two children, ages 7 and 9. She’s works as a finance consultant for an investment firm, is sharply dressed and very articulate. She comes to us because her relationship with her husband, Peter is suffering. The physical part of their love life disappeared two years ago, they often quarrel, and she feels discouraged about the future of their love. She says that Peter is irresponsible and careless and that, “if I relax even a little, all hell will break loose.” She says that he accuses her of being in his words, “a total control freak, who micromanages him and their whole family, and never lets her guard down.” Daniela is habitually in her control strategies and justifies them by believing that without them, chaos would descend on her and the family.
Rather than focus on what is wrong with the relationship, we started by guiding her to look closely at her control strategies and see how that affects her and those she relates with. Then, we helped her to understand why she developed so much control, and to feel the fear underneath. We explored, her childhood story of a depressed and suicidal mother whom she had to take care of and a absent father. It was highly challenging for her to look so honestly at herself, but she is motivated to begin the inner journey.
Gabriela is 40-year-old woman. She is an excellent and thriving therapist in her professional life, but her relationships with men have been a disaster. She falls for guys who are impressive and strong on the outside, becomes mystified by them and then loses all sense of herself. As the relationship progresses, she finds herself unable to set limits, goes along with whatever he wants including in sex but then builds more and more resentment. She knows that all this comes from idealizing her father who was powerful, successful, and charismatic but not at all empathic or sensitive to others. She has started a new relationship but this time, she is determined to do it differently. As she works with us, she is finding more courage to trust her own feelings and even assert herself when something doesn’t feel right for her. It is bringing up a lot of fear to stand up for herself in this new way and also deep sadness when she realizes that by idealizing her father, she abandoned herself. She is replacing her mystification with men with anger at her father and all men for being so narcissistic. Finally, instead of giving up all her hobbies to devote her time to taking care of her man’s needs, she now is going regularly to yoga classes. And she is beginning of really listen to her own needs and feelings.
Finally, we can offer the example of Simon. He is working regularly with (Krish) not because he is suffering in his relationship, or in his work, or with his family. In fact, nothing really disturbs him in these areas. But what deeply affects him is that he can’t find real meaning to his life. His focus has always been on the outside, on success, on approval from others, on feeling powerful and accomplished but for the past year, these things no longer fulfill him. This realization has left a huge whole and emptiness inside without any idea how to fill it.
Krish has been focusing on two areas of his inner wanderlust – helping to bring up his buried vulnerability and also helping him to explore his values and priorities. In the past, his focus on the outside, on business, success, wealth, and a sense of accomplishment, detracted him from diving deeply into his fear and insecurities. Furthermore, it was not something that he could do without guidance because it is a world that he has not been familiar with and has judged. Also, his outer focus didn’t allow him to examine what really mattered to him. But now, that has changed. He is, for instance, curious why Krish chose to abandon his medical practice and go to India in search of a spiritual master. This inquiry has opened them to discuss deeper existential issues about life, death, and mortality in general.
The term “wanderlust” is really a metaphor for our search of meaning, transformation, aliveness, love, and a life of living out of the conventional conditioning that we were all given. It includes, in our experience, opening to adventure of all kinds and also opening to inspiration, guidance, and teaching from those who have been traveling the path of truth. It involves risk and for each of us, the risk is different at different times in our life.
We encourage you to begin to ask yourself if you need more outer or inner wanderlust at this point in your life and then begin to see how you could move on the exciting and fulfilling journey of exploration.