1. Travel is a way to grow. It is not the Answer to life.

Travel puts you out of your comfort zone. The world become a dark, mysterious place like it was in your childhood.

You meet a lot of doe-eyed people who left their cushy jobs and cut off ties to follow an oversaturated stock photograph on a blog, hoping it would fix everything.

Seriously: don’t.

2. You forget how things look. You remember how they made you feel.

My fondest memories come from the people I met, the communities I found, or lazy days I spent in a coffee shop admiring the weather. I don’t remember what the Eiffel tower looks like. Stop playing tourist for a day, and pretend you live there.

3. It gets lonely, but it teaches you independence.

People end up spending most of their lives within 50 miles from where they were born. This is how you end up with friends and familiarity. The people you meet can’t be your close friends; you might not see them again. You end up being a background character in everyone’s lives.

5. Not every place is home, but a home can be any place.

I’d often tell people I am travelling looking for a home. I didn’t quite know what it meant but figured I would find the answer one day. Home isn’t something you find; it is something you build. I’m building one in Toronto.

6. You will always want more.

I love traveling. Today more than ever. I can’t wait to go hiking on the Isle of Skye, backpack the Netherlands again, and do a Canadian road trip (I just need to learn how to drive). It takes sometime to figure out what kind of places work for you. You get better at travelling.

7. Do it for yourself.

Not your Facebook friends. Not your Instagram followers. Not to make your co-workers jealous. The happiest moments of my travels were the ones where I felt I didn’t need a witness to my adventure.