Why do we wander? What triggers hearts, minds, feet to roam? Do we go away to find fresh satisfaction in the return? Or do we stray to escape, to get lost, to be found, or to discover?

I do a fair amount of roving myself. My ostensible reason is usually a bone-deep hunger for warm rushing surf, but even that physical explanation is rooted in the emotional effect of the water-borne experience. I go because of how sliding down a wave makes me feel – in the moment – about my life and the world around me. And I go because, in those moments, I make promises to myself about how I will approach life and the world when I return. I wear my journeys like post-its for the psyche, reminders of insights, to-dos for the soul.

A trip last month to Costa Rica brought me home full of good ideas and progressed thinking on various work projects, as well as new friendships, new recipes, and a renewed commitment to be more patient with myself and others (especially my kids). I also came back with song lyrics, the first I’ve ever tried to write. I’m going to spare you the full story of how this came about. Suffice it to say that my friend, who works in the music industry, challenged me to pen something for a female pop singer. I can’t even remember the siren’s name or the name of her current billboard hit, but when I heard the sappy love ballad, I could only pray that it would be the last time. I went to bed thinking I had no words that would make sense in the mouth of the girl to whom I’d just listened.

But I awoke the next day with love on my mind. Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. What I mean is that I was thinking about relationships. Two close friends of mine had just split up after 15 or so years. But it occurred to me that they were only the most recent reminder of how “happy couples” sometimes aren’t. Each situation has its own tragedy, but so often the phrase “I just wasn’t happy” floats to the surface. I found myself wondering: if it’s true that our blessings are our curses, is the ideal of happiness something of a burden? Are we waiting, wandering through life, sorting through options, weighing alternatives, wondering which feelings are true, yearning one day to reach the fabled pinnacle of peaceful satisfaction?

Modern existence is full of too many choices. It messes with our heads. It tests our hearts. It makes us lean to selfishness and dissatisfaction. We need to get over ourselves, to a certain extent. Forget love for that one single, special other for a bit. This moment in time is asking for us to show a lot more love for total strangers (again, mind out of the gutter please). I’m talking about the 1 billion people who lack access to clean drinking water or the 9.7 million children around the world who die of poverty each year. You can touch their lives in monumental ways. Be “into” them and you’ll be more beautiful than you have ever been. My own experience tells me you’ll be way happier too. And that kind of thing rubs off.

So, here’s an offer. I won’t make you listen to me sing my song, and we both stop pondering our own existential glee for a bit. Let’s TakePart in lives that need our love like it’s never been needed before. Then maybe we will become that special someone to a whole world that needs only ever us. Xo

The Song of Wandering Aengus
by William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lads and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

(Photos by Maria Moyer)