Letters to My Son: Longing to Be Elsewhere

This essay is about Elvágyódás — that Hungarian word that means a deep longing to be elsewhere, to escape one’s current place or condition, to drift toward some undefined horizon where one imagines life might feel lighter, freer, or simply more real.

My dear son,

There are certain words that contain within them an ache so specific it feels as though an entire nation’s heart has been distilled into sound. Elvágyódás is one of them. It has no true English equivalent. The closest we can come is to say it means “longing to be elsewhere,” though that translation feels like pressing a wildflower between glass — what remains is delicate but dead.

When I first heard this word, I thought of every time I stood at a window and wanted to be anywhere but where I was. A boy sitting in a small house wanting to see the world. A young man in a foreign city wanting to return home. A father watching his child sleep, wondering about the many roads not taken and the ones still left to walk.

We are born with this pull in our blood. Even the animals know it. The salmon feel it in the river current, the geese in the seasonal wind, the wild horses in the scent of distant rain. They all move toward something unseen yet felt. So do we. Only we call it by a word.

You will come to know this feeling well, son. It will appear first in small ways like when the walls of your childhood room start to feel like they are closing in, when you begin to see the borders of your town as fences, when you realize that familiarity can be a kind of quiet prison. You’ll think the cure is movement. And perhaps at first it is.

You’ll pack your things one day and set out with that restless current inside you. You might not even know where you’re going. You’ll tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You’ll watch the highway roll beneath the car or the train slice through the dark countryside and think that freedom is a destination. I once believed that too.

I left home late at twenty-nine with more hunger than wisdom. Every place I went, I thought I would finally arrive at peace. Los Angeles, Austin, Philadelphia, they were all just variations of the same mirage. Each time I arrived somewhere new, I would look around and think, Ah, this is it. But soon enough, the ache would return, quiet at first, then louder. It wasn’t the place that was wrong. It was that I was looking outward for something that could only be found inward.

There is a dangerous romance in longing. It can make us believe we are poets simply for being dissatisfied. But the truth is that restlessness alone is not art. It’s only the soil from which art might grow, if we have the courage to dig deep into it.

In my travels I met men who had crossed oceans, climbed mountains, changed names, and reinvented their entire lives. Some were searching for money, others for meaning, a few for escape. What united them was that same pulse of Elvágyódás — the ache to be elsewhere. Yet I noticed something curious: wherever they went, they carried the same loneliness folded neatly in their suitcase.

Because longing, if left unexamined, becomes a habit. We can get addicted to it. We can make a religion of dissatisfaction.

But I also learned that longing, if faced honestly, can become a compass. It can point not to another country but to another understanding of ourselves. It can whisper, “You do not need to go elsewhere; you need to become elsewhere.”

I have often wondered where this longing begins. Perhaps it is the natural rebellion of the soul against the smallness of everyday life — the repetition, the bills, the weather, the way people ask the same polite questions and expect the same polite answers. There’s a part of us that wants to break that pattern, to stand up in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday and shout, “There must be more than this!”

And there is more — but not always in the direction we expect.

Sometimes the escape we need is not physical but spiritual. The greatest journey you’ll ever take may be from your head to your heart, from the noise of your ambitions to the quiet of your awareness. The landscapes inside you are vast.

When I think of Elvágyódás now, I don’t see it as a curse. I see it as a question life keeps asking us: What are you avoiding by wanting to be elsewhere?

Most of the time, what we are really trying to escape is ourselves — the responsibility of being present in a moment we do not fully like, the discipline of staying when every part of us wants to flee.

There’s a story about a monk who left his monastery because he was unhappy. He traveled across the mountains to another monastery, hoping the new one would be more peaceful. But on the way, he realized that wherever he went, he would bring himself with him. So he turned back. He learned that peace was not a place but a posture.

I think about that monk often. His return was not a failure. It was wisdom.

I don’t want to tell you not to travel, son. Travel widely. See the world. Walk the streets of Budapest where that word was born. Feel its music in the air. But remember this: every journey you take outward should also take you inward. If the two don’t meet, you will end up a collector of postcards instead of a collector of understanding.

In every foreign land you visit, look for yourself among strangers. In every unfamiliar tongue, listen for the parts of your soul that have forgotten how to speak. When you feel that ache of Elvágyódás, don’t rush to cure it. Sit with it. Let it show you what you are yearning for, and whether that thing is truly far away — or simply buried under the noise of your own life.

If you learn to make peace with where you are, something miraculous happens. The world begins to open itself to you. The light falls differently. People reveal their stories more easily. Even the wind seems to carry your name more gently. You no longer move through life as an exile. You move as a pilgrim.

And the difference between the two is this: an exile runs from home; a pilgrim carries home within him.

When you grow restless don’t be too quick to buy a ticket. Ask yourself what you’re running from. The answer will tell you more than the destination ever could.

If it’s the monotony of your days, then change how you see them. If it’s the weight of your choices, then forgive yourself for making them. If it’s the ache of unrealized dreams, then start small and make one real. The horizon you’re seeking might only be a shift in perception away.

The world is large, yes, but the soul is larger. You could walk across every continent and still not arrive if you haven’t first made peace with your own heart.

Perhaps one day you’ll stand at some quiet place, maybe on a hill, maybe by the ocean and feel that familiar ache to be elsewhere. Don’t mistake it for unhappiness. It’s simply life reminding you that you are meant to move, not necessarily across geography, but through understanding.

When you feel that Elvágyódás, whisper to it softly:

“I see you. You are not my enemy. You are the wind that moves me inward.”

If you can do that, you’ll discover a secret that took me half a lifetime to learn: the desire to be elsewhere is not a flaw in the human spirit. It’s a compass pointing us toward the place within where we are not yet free.

So travel, son. Travel far and wide. But when you return, sit quietly for a while. Notice the way the light falls in your own room, the way your breath rises and falls like the tide. Realize that this, too, is a kind of elsewhere.

And perhaps then, Elvágyódás will not be a wound but a wing.

Dad