Who has time to think about the meaning of life, happiness, and fulfillment when iPads, Facebook, and jobs fill the days? These are big concepts. Deep questions. Topics that, for much of my life, I rarely contemplated. Like most people of the world, I was busy doing my best to hang on and enjoy the ride as life whizzed by.
The miracle is that despite a formidable capacity for denial and significant gaps in knowledge of myself and the world around me, important questions still accumulated: Who am I? Where do I find meaning? What is my purpose?
Now, with streaks of gray in my blonde hair and fifty years on this planet, these are questions I’m finally getting around to asking. The answers are not what I expected.
Ellen Barone is an American writer and wanderer. After 15 years as an independent content creator for travel and tourism, she has been enjoying extended stays abroad for the past decade, the inspiration behind her travel memoir, "I Could Live Here" (November 2023)
There’s a certain comfort in leading an ordinary life, slipping into the cozy habits of everyday routines and donning the familiar masks of personal and professional identities.
But no matter how snug the habitual may feel, how secure the career, house, or marriage might appear, now and again life’s Big Questions (e.g. Who am I? What is my purpose?) simmer to the surface, casting a nagging net of uneasiness over my ordinary contentment.
So, with the hope of better understanding life’s deeper meanings, I open my heart and travel beyond my comfort zone in search of answers, different ways of thinking and universal truths.
Ellen Barone is an American writer and wanderer. After 15 years as an independent content creator for travel and tourism, she has been enjoying extended stays abroad for the past decade, the inspiration behind her travel memoir, "I Could Live Here" (November 2023)