When Not Boarding Becomes the Bravest Journey
The train ticket in my hand smelled like possibility and fear. Chittagong to Dhaka, 4:30 PM departure. I’d bought it three times this month and returned it twice. Not because of money—though that mattered—but because something in my chest tightened every time I imagined boarding.
Why do I dream of running to places where I’ll still wake up with the same thoughts?
The vendor outside was selling jackfruit. Sweet, sticky, overwhelming. The exact smell from my childhood when Mama would cut them on our kitchen table, warning me not to eat too much or I’d get sick. I was seven then, believing distance was measured only in meters, that the farthest place was the market two streets away. How simple it felt to be contained.
Now I catch myself scrolling through photographs of mountains I’ll never climb, beaches where I’ll never feel the sand. But here’s what stops me: the realization that I’m not seeking new places. I’m seeking the permission to be someone else.
We are tourists in our own consciousness, carrying expired visas to parts of ourselves we’ve never visited.
Last month, Happy found me staring at the world map on Arash’s bedroom wall. “Where do you want to go?” she asked. I traced my finger along coastlines, across borders that existed only on paper, and realized I couldn’t answer. Not because there were too many places, but because there were none. What I wanted wasn’t geography.
The paradox cuts deeper when I understand this: every impulse to escape teaches me something about staying. Every train ticket I don’t use becomes a small victory against the lie that somewhere else holds what here lacks.
In our culture, we celebrate the wanderer—the Sufi mystic, the traveling merchant, the son who ventures far and returns wise. But what about the courage of the person who sits in the same chair, day after day, learning to love the view from their own window? What about the bravery of remaining until you stop being a stranger to yourself?
I think about the moments of deepest peace I’ve known. None came from changing my address. They came from changing my relationship to the address I already had. The morning I finally saw our cramped apartment not as a limitation but as everything we needed. The evening I realized our balcony, with its struggling tomato plants, held more beauty than any postcard.
The most exotic journey is the six inches from your head to your heart. The most foreign country is your own unexplored silence. And the greatest adventure? Discovering you were never actually trapped—you were just afraid of what you’d find if you stopped running long enough to look.
Here’s what I’ve learned about staying still: it’s not resignation. It’s revolution. It’s choosing to bloom where you’re planted not because you can’t move, but because you finally understand that the soil beneath your feet is sacred ground.
The train pulls away from the platform. I still have my ticket, warm in my pocket. Maybe tomorrow I’ll use it, maybe not. But today, for the first time, not boarding feels like the most honest journey I could take.
What if the place you’re trying to reach is where you already are?
