I used to carry my whole life in a bag. Light bur­den, easy to tidy up.

Before we came to Ottawa, we lived on the road for almost two years. Cen­tral Amer­ica, South Amer­ica, South Pacific… A crazy run across con­ti­nents and coun­tries, a life of bor­der cross­ings, inmi­gración, cam­bio and pass­port stamps, a life of moun­tains, plains, prairies, fjords, deserts, beaches and jun­gle, a life of col­ors, noises and sur­prises. New year in Panama and Hong Kong, the Rio Car­ni­val, Xmas under the sun cel­e­brated with fire­works and lots of choco­late. The nicest places on earth, free-minded peo­ple and chicken buses. That was my life. I was bound to live this way.

Some­where along the way, I came to long for a sta­ble life. Sure, cold show­ers were lots of fun (and it’s sup­pos­edly good for your skin…), not being able to remem­ber the name of the coun­try in which you lived the pre­vi­ous week was at least fairly orig­i­nal and the free­dom to move around the world, price­less. But still, I wanted to be able to buy other clothes than the one I’ve had wore for the last few years, being able to put my stuffs into the washing-machine rather than wash­ing all of my under­wear under the daily shower. I envied every country’s cit­i­zens. I was a world cit­i­zen, but it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to fit in.

I real­ized that even though my travel knowl­edge had got­ten pretty good I hadn’t been pre­pared for everyday’s life in everyday’s world.

The first few years were a strug­gle. I couldn’t cook, didn’t know how to look for a job (although I was, in my opin­ion, a good employee — I just found it hard to deal with all the HR bull­shit), didn’t know any­body. I over­looked prob­lem alter­nat­ing between the Latino “mañana” and the traveler’s spirit — if it doesn’t work out in a place, just move. But I wasn’t going to move. I was going to improve.

Even­tu­ally, things fell into places, life got bet­ter from a mate­ri­al­is­tic point of view and I learned to cook pasta with­out killing the pot.

But deep down, I keep the ying & yang dichotomy. Life at home is a play and I play my part. Go to work at 9:00, have lunch in the busi­ness dis­trict, fin­ish my day by 5:00, go exer­cise and relax in the evening. When I buy clothes, I have a dress-code pol­icy in mind whereas y own pol­icy used to be “eas­ily wash­able under the shower” and “cute-artistic-original”. Damn it, I haven’t wore my Che tee-shirt in years, and I’m not even men­tion­ing all the “I made it myself tees” neatly folded in my dresser !

Part of me in long­ing for a sta­ble life, a good job, nice friends and a good part­ner. I under­stand the world through social Dar­win­ism : sur­vival of the fittest in a urban envi­ron­ment, fatal­ism being the key word. Aware of the fact the world isn’t like I would like it to be, but pow­er­less to change it. Aware of the fact I’m just a pawn on the checker.

But a huge part of me is still ready for adven­tures, crazy life on the road. Con­vinced I’m dif­fer­ent, that I can change the world, that I can craft it my way. That mate­ri­al­is­tic stuffs don’t mat­ter, that I can live any­where with lit­tle, that dis­cov­er­ing the world is more impor­tant than mas­ter­ing one’s dis­trict, area or city. The world is big and it’s beg­ging to be trav­eled. That hap­pi­ness can’t be bought is is found when you don’t expect it. That climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der is just a way to fool peo­ple into work­ing their ass of in the first part of their life, and long­ing for retire­ment in the other. That soci­ety shouldn’t be telling me what to do and how to behave.

I look through the win­dow and today it hurts. Weather is cold and so are peo­ple, no mess on the street but the noise of light traf­fic, no col­ors but the whitish snow on the ground, no warmth out­side the 5$ cof­fee cups, no kids play­ing but in specif­i­cally designed areas. I miss trav­el­ing. I miss life at the fullest. I miss empty spaces, crowned plazas, street peo­ple, sun­sets and loud voices.

I miss my yang.

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