Perhaps wanderlust is just homesickness for another version of ourselves

There's this one moment, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, when everyday life briefly falters. A photo pops up. A scent. A playlist that happens to play that one specific song. And suddenly, we're back: on the beach in Ibiza, in the morning light of Ubud, on a rooftop terrace in Athens – in a place that is long gone. Spatially. And temporally.

We call this feeling wanderlust. This quiet, persistent longing for a place we may not have been to in a long time.

But what if it's not the place we miss at all?

What if, in truth, we miss someone – and that someone is ourselves? Just a version of us who stayed there. Barefoot, unshowered, happy, with no appointments on our mind.

Perhaps that's why wanderlust is rarely just a longing for faraway places. Perhaps it's homesickness for a different version of ourselves.

What wanderlust really means

Wanderlust is generally considered the opposite of homesickness. While homesickness draws us home, wanderlust draws us out – into the distance, into the unknown, away from the familiar.

At least at first glance.

Because if you look closer, we rarely long for "the distance" in general. We long for something surprisingly specific. Not for the sea, but for that exact beach. Not for Italy, but for that one alley in Rome that smelled of espresso and warm stone. Not for Bali, but for that one morning in Ubud when the day was still completely open before us.

And then it's suddenly no longer about distance.

Then it's about memory.

We don't miss Bali – we miss the feeling of being in Bali

When we say "I miss Bali," we rarely mean the complete reality of a place. Do we really miss the traffic? The humid midday heat? The jet lag, the mosquitoes, the Wi-Fi that went out just when we needed it most?

Probably not.

We miss a selection. The first coffee while the air was still cool. The drive through the rice fields with open windows. The light just before sunset, which bathed everything in gold. The fact that on that day, we didn't urgently need to be anywhere.

Our memory is a remarkably talented curator. It deletes waiting times, bad nights, and minor catastrophes from the archive and months later presents us with a carefully edited "best-of" version of our own trip.

And frankly, it looks excellent.

Why our daily routine dissolves abroad

At home, we usually know pretty well who we are. We have routines, obligations, roles. We are colleagues, partners, daughters, bosses, neighbors. People know us – and with that familiarity come expectations.

When traveling, this fabric loosens.

In the cafe, no one knows what we do for a living. No one knows our past. No one asks if we usually get up at six or have been claiming for three years that we'll finally exercise more.

For a while, we can simply be someone who is just there. Without a backstory. Without explanation.

That can be surprisingly liberating.

The people we become on vacation

At home, a twenty-minute walk is sometimes already too far. On vacation, we walk eighteen kilometers through a foreign city – and call it exploring.

At home, we can barely open our eyes in the morning. In Bali, we voluntarily get up at five because there's a sunrise somewhere we don't want to miss.

We try dishes whose names we can't pronounce. We talk to strangers at the next table. We spontaneously board a boat to an island we knew nothing about that morning.

Why, though?

Perhaps because travel gives us silent permission not to take our own habits so seriously for a few days. No one demands that we be braver or more curious.

But suddenly, we can be.

Open time – the real luxury of travel

Perhaps after a trip, we don't miss free time in the classic sense at all. Perhaps we miss time that hasn't yet been assigned a task.

That's a subtle but crucial difference.

At home, too, there are free evenings, free weekends. But they are often planned long before they even begin: shopping, sports, meeting friends, catching up on everything that piled up during the week.

On the road, there are those rarer hours when the answer to "What are we doing later?" is actually: "I have no idea."

And if you think about it, that's exactly what feels like the greatest luxury of all. A day that doesn't yet know what it will become.

Why everything seems brighter in our memories when we're away

We barely remember an ordinary Tuesday four months ago. But a specific evening in Mykonos, a scooter ride through Canggu, or a random conversation in Istanbul – we might remember those years later.

New environments demand more attention. We look more closely because we don't know what awaits around the next corner. Smells are unfamiliar, sounds are new; even breakfast feels different when there are palm trees instead of trams outside.

At home, much runs on autopilot.

When we're away, we're awake.

Perhaps that's why we don't just miss other places. Perhaps we miss the intensity with which we were present there.

The trap of perfect memory

Of course, there's a catch to this story.

The version of ourselves we miss when traveling existed under special conditions. She didn't have to do her taxes, tackle a mountain of laundry, or be in a meeting at nine o'clock on Monday morning.

It's easy to be spontaneous when the calendar is empty. It's easy to enjoy life when you've consciously taken a break from it.

The comparison between our travel self and our everyday self is therefore sometimes simply unfair.

The person on the beach hadn't automatically understood life better. Strictly speaking, she was simply on vacation.

What wanderlust actually reveals to us

And this is where it gets interesting.

Because if we particularly miss a trip, it's worth asking an honest question: What exactly do I miss?

Is it really the place? Or was I slower there? More curious? More outdoors, less reachable, more often talking to strangers? Did I sleep better, read more, forget my phone more often?

Wanderlust is sometimes a pretty good indicator of what we're missing in our everyday lives. Not all of it can be taken home.

But a lot of it can.

What we can take home with us

This sounds trivial at first, but it might be the most difficult exercise after every trip: not just bringing back souvenirs, but habits.

Perhaps it wasn't the beach club we missed, but the long breakfast. Perhaps not Ibiza, but the dancing. Not Ubud, but the quiet of early morning. Not Mykonos, but the feeling of dressing up nicely every evening and looking forward to the day.

Suddenly, wanderlust turns into a completely different, much more interesting question:

Which version of myself do I actually want to take home with me?

Perhaps in the end, we don't miss a place at all

Of course, we'll continue to say, "I miss Bali." "I want to go back to Ibiza." "I'd love to be in Italy right now."

It's easier.

But behind some of these sentences, there might be something else. We miss long breakfasts. Warm nights. The feeling of not constantly having to be available. We miss curiosity, lightness, and days when every hour wasn't already planned.

And sometimes, we simply miss the person we were in those very moments.

Then wanderlust is suddenly no longer just a longing for as many kilometers as possible between us and home.

Then wanderlust is actually homesickness for a different version of ourselves.

And the most beautiful journey afterward might not be to book another flight immediately. But to take a small piece of that person home with us.