“Saudade is an emotional state of melancholy or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone.” From its original Portuguese it directly translates specifically to the word ‘longing’ though the type of longing it is indicative of is so much deeper.
I’ve seen this word floating around a lot over the last couple of weeks, mostly on different social media platforms where my algorithm has been skewed towards to traveler in me. A lot of those who are sharing it are doing so in respect to this field of interest; travel, & it’s really struck a chord with me as someone who has been feeling rather “saudade” for a while now.
To those of you who are not travelers, who don’t crave the almost ingrained need to go out into different parts of the world & forge connections with the people who live there, this concept may be very foreign to you. But to those of you who are like me, this feeling is all too familiar & it can be immutable & often impossible to satisfy. You see a lot of us crave the authentic human relationships we make in our travels but we often do so all at once. We want the ability to have these people we love to see, whom we see seldom, if barely at all, in the places that they live their lives, but we want the ability to do so simultaneously with every one we’ve made connections with. We want to be able to call up our friends in Scotland or Singapore or Seattle or Australia or LA or Hawaii or New York & get dinner with them, or hang out face to face, because they make us feel that sense of what it is to be human & have genuine, effortless connection. Needless to say this is, unfortunately, an impossibility.
They say the marker of a true friend is that you can grow separately, living your respective lives & having your own lived experiences, but when you come back together it feels like no time has passed even though you’ve grown & aged as a human being. For those who truly find bliss in our travels, not because of how it presents outwardly & idealistically, but because of how it gives us an understanding of the different parts out this, our human tribe, these scattered friendships around the globe leave us in a constant state of this longing. But unfortunately travel is expensive & often the plans we so desperately want to lay fall through because of lack of funding or time.
I had a moment of great privilege a few months ago. I came to the realization that we wouldn’t be hitting The UK this year & that made me really depressed. Not just because I love to venture out, but because, in a lot of ways, The UK, its people, its culture, its locations, have grown to be a bit of a second (or third, or fourth) home for me. Any time I hope the pond it doesn’t feel touristy or like a vacation, but instead feels like a homecoming. My sadness came out of a realization that I wasn’t going to get to see the people & the places that I love so dearly & not out of missing out on a “vacation.”
I think that truly those of us who are “travelers” will tell you that our “vacations” are seldom that, vacations. We spend our time abroad doing the leg work to meet people where they’re at & experience a glimpse of life through their eyes or their shoes. I often return home from trips feeling like I need a vacation, not because the trip was draining, it’s often quite the opposite, invigorating, I’ve just been on mentally, physically, & spiritually the whole time & need time to recenter & recalculate my bearings.
As per usual, I say all of this to inform. I feel like the vast majority of people travel to vacation & those of us who view it in more of an ambassadorial way are seldom spoken about or acknowledged. Just know that most days your traveler friends are experiencing a state of saudade & whether you empathize with it or not it is a near constant in most of our lives.
As always, much love,
C