This is what I'll chase.

Writing after midnight or early morning hits different. It's 04:47 am, and I'm lying on my bed, listening to the tik-tik-tiks of the watch in the room. Somehow, the room is so silent that I can actually hear silence. And I'm pulling out my Substack app now to start typing. Perfect, right?

Recently, I had an opportunity to meet several new people — strangers from all over the country, with so many stories and experiences of their own. We all had just one thing in common: the willingness to travel, the only cause that brought us all together.

If you know me, you would also know that I am someone who thrives on one-to-one connections. I love groups and gangs of friends, talking and laughing together loudly, yes. But I love breaking down our whole life's purpose into statements that can be articulated to another fellow human being. I love depth. It's for a reason that you can't really enjoy swimming in shallow water; you need depth to fully test your skills. Likewise, for me, every one-to-one connection I make is how I keep believing in humanity.

One can go to any part of the world and still find souls who can somehow stretch their hands very easily to touch our own. Sometimes, sadly, the people we keep with ourselves constantly can't relate to us. They can't understand us. They can't get us. It doesn't mean they care less; it just means that their lives have been very different from ours, despite having similar living circumstances.

And then you go to a remote area somewhere you've never been before to find out that there exists a person who can exactly understand you, who can make you feel seen, who can just complete your sentences like they have known you your entire life. People like that exist. I've witnessed it firsthand.

I am not talking about soulmates here. No, please don't confuse this with that. I am just talking about someone understanding the fragments of you that you never thought you would even find the courage to share with someone. Or maybe it's less about the person and more about the courage to finally share them. Maybe the fact that you've only known that person for a couple of days makes it easier to share because their judgment would affect you less. Or maybe this person just is a beautiful soul, inside and out. Either way, it does help.

I don't know where I'm going with this train of thought. I just wanted to highlight that traveling is how we know that the life we are currently living is not the only way to live our lives. It is how we discover different versions of ourselves we didn't know existed before. We explore ourselves as much as we explore the world. Every time you come across a hidden gem, you also come across a version of yourself that has been waiting to be unveiled.

Traveling, writing, reading, people-watching, having random conversations with strangers that somehow open the secret doors to your caved-in brain — these are what I live for. These are the topmost things I want out of life.

People usually want these things in their free time, whereas, for me, I think these are the ultimate necessities. These make me feel alive. These make me feel completely myself. These make me feel like I'm actually living, and not just merely existing. And I think that's what I will chase.