Not so long ago, I took the IELTS exam, and during the speaking section, the examiner asked me whether I would ever go to space. I answered almost immediately: No!
She looked slightly surprised and asked why not. My answer was simple: Why would I want to? I have a life that I genuinely enjoy. I like my friends, my books, my routines, the city I live in, and the people who fill my days. The idea of leaving all that behind to float through space in exchange for an extraordinary view has never appealed to me.
Nonetheless, the question lingered in my mind long after the exam was over. It made me think about travel more generally.
I enjoy traveling. I love the anticipation before a journey, the first walk through an unfamiliar city, and the satisfying feeling of seeing the blue horizon after a long time. Some of my happiest memories were made while traveling. And yet, unlike many people I know, I never feel restless when I stay home. I do not spend my life counting down the days until my next trip. If I travel, I am happy. If I do not, I am happy too.
For a long time, I wondered whether this made me somehow insufficiently adventurous. We live in a culture that often treats movement as a virtue in itself. There is always another destination to visit, another country to tick off a list, another photograph to take. Sometimes it seems as though a life only becomes interesting once it is measured in kilometres.
But the older I get, the less convinced I am that adventure depends on physical distance. Some of the most significant journeys of my life have taken place while sitting or standing perfectly still.
I have traveled through centuries by reading history books. I have entered unfamiliar worlds through novels. I have discovered entirely new ways of thinking by learning foreign languages. Every language I learn reveals possibilities that did not exist before. Suddenly, there are new books I can read, jokes I can understand, conversations I can have, people I can connect with. A new language does not merely add vocabulary; it expands the boundaries of one's world.
The same is true of people. Some of the most unexpected adventures in my life began with a conversation rather than a train ticket. A friendship, a chance encounter, an evening spent talking to someone whose experiences are completely different from my own.
Perhaps this is why I have never felt deprived when I stay in one place. The world has always seemed capable of finding its way to me. It arrives in the form of books, languages, stories, and people. It arrives through curiosity.
Looking back, I think this is what reading taught me from a very young age. A book was never simply an object. It was a doorway. Long before I traveled anywhere on my own, books carried me to different countries, different centuries, and different lives. They taught me that wonder does not require movement. It only requires attention.
So no, I would probably never go to space.
Not because I lack curiosity, but because I have never found curiosity to be dependent on distance. As long as there are languages I cannot yet speak, books I have not yet read, and people I have not yet met, I do not feel that I am standing still.
There are still entire worlds left to discover. Most of them, I suspect, can be reached without leaving Earth at all.
