I promised to write an article about being a modern nomad, and I did. But after reading it, I realized it was total crap. It was nothing more than facts, written as if it were for National Geographic. Why is it easier to give facts and figures than explaining what actually goes through one’s mind? Putting your life on paper is just too hard. It doesn’t feel real, and the memories are hard to catch.

For example, I couldn’t describe to you how it felt to fly away from my home to a country on the other side of Europe for half a year. Nor can I explain to you what it feels like when you start to forget your own language.

Being on the move means being detached from your usual comforts. It is having a keychain without a key, not seeing your face for a month, and not knowing where you’ll be the next day. When you’re a modern nomad, you really need nothing more than money and a backpack. Even so, the things you own start feeling like a burden.

Your traveling companions become a tribe that exists while you travel, but disappears when you arrive to the destination. You learn to accept that, and the strangers you meet become aids in helping you get along your way. They become roofs over your head, warm showers, free meals, and security. It becomes useful to be nice to people, and you start feeling gratitude for having normality in life.

During your journey, the meaning of life gets closer to survival than ever before. You can salvage food from the trash, and you can sleep anywhere. You realize why dog is a man’s best friend; there’s no better life insurance when sleeping on the street than a big dog. You discover that there’s nothing more handy for warmth than sleeping in a group or putting newspaper inside your clothes. All this in the name of survival.

At a music festival on a rainy and windy night in northern Italy, I was shivering on a bench with a blanket around me. I was half-asleep and thought of nothing more than the cold, but in front of me was a paralyzed woman dancing happily in her wheelchair, ignoring her disability. She was just so full of joy that I could no longer think about my misery. I just watched her rolling her chair into the dancing crowd and waving her hands in the air., and I was happy.

Just these memories alone are enough to make the whole journey worthwhile. I’m poorer than ever now, but I have seen things that most people will never get the chance to see. The world is full of things that nobody can adequately describe to you in words.

You just have to take that backpack and leave. Come on, I dare you. Breathe free. Be a nomad for a while.