nathalie shushan

Travel allows you to leave behind the version of yourself that is burdened by the minutiae of daily life. Under the penalty of missed opportunities, you embrace discomfort in ways you wouldn’t have considered in the cozy shelter of normal life. You take bold chances and dance under moonlight and allow yourself to be vulnerable, maybe for the first time.  With practice, your fearlessness becomes an inextricable part of you.  Memories are born of impulsive decisions made from a place of desire instead of fear and you learn to lead a more fulfilling life because of it.  

Your senses heightened in awe, you begin to regard the world around you with wonder. Inspired, you let your curiosity guide you through new towns, across borders and over magnificent terrain.. You experience different cultures and try new foods and travel to exotic places until one day, almost by accident, you find yourself laughing with your friends among the dunes of the Sahara desert. After a long day of travel (both by car and by camel), you explore. Feet sinking into sand with each step, you familiarize yourself with your new surroundings. Before long, the sun disappears discreetly over the horizon and the sky glows a pinkish hue before it fades to the near black that ushers in the night.  You and your friends fight fatigue while your eyes adjust to the darkness, desperate to maximize every second of your time in the expanse of desert.  All of the work you’ve done to stay present pays off in a single moment beneath an expansive sky when, after catching your first glimpse of a shooting star, you have to stop to catch your breath.

Breathe. You never realized that beauty could be a force powerful enough to take your breath away but, in this moment, you have to remind yourself to breathe.  You’ve always wanted to feel limitless but maybe it’s more than enough to know that the world is limitless around you instead.  Beneath the glow of the stars, in the cool air, you feel something deeper than a connection to the universe – you suddenly have an innate understanding that you and it are one.  The realization courses like blood through your veins and instills in you a sense of belonging so strong, you wonder if anything you’ve ever been a part of has been as real as this moment.  You are a finite being in an infinite world but tonight you feel like nothing ever has to end. Graced with the company of the stars that so clearly freckle the night sky, you are reminded that the atoms and molecules that have formed you are the building blocks of life on earth. Your contentment expands like heat from your chest. With hair on sand and feet buried, you become more and more aware of the weight of your body on the earth.  You are entirely grounded in a physical sense but you feel weightless, floating through a sea of glittering stars carried by a new sense of euphoria.