For me, it’s the moment when I arrive at a brand new city, busily absorbing all the sights, sometimes not knowing where I would sleep that night.

Parenting has ceased my wanderlust. And in that sense, i have tempered my need for adventure. I just wrote this to a colleague:

I think mortality is never far from our minds since we are middle-aged. regardless of whether you wanna make your life count by leaving a legacy behind, you are likely to be anxious about sucking the marrow out of life.

Then, the question lies in whether life will continue to throw you enough surprises/stimulation such that you feel you are living, not going through the motions. some seasons of life are bland, partly due to the choices we make. if we expect a dopamine-filled, adrenaline-pumping existence all the time, then yes, I think you are being greedy. but if you are happy to extract and embrace the essence of a plain season and use it to bolster your soul, then nope. because we owe it to ourselves to feel alive.

To answer my own question, I feel most alive when I travel but am trying to capture a semblance of that exhilarating spirit in my everyday mundane life