I live 20 minutes away from an international airport. In fact, I hear a plane right now, a long, low sound as a jet takes off in the leaden skies we have today.

Despite the proximity, Dulles is mostly out of mind. That is, of course, until I enter it. Then I step into its impressive lobby with my heart in my throat. I’m anxious because I’m rushing to make a flight, wondering how long the security line will be. But mixed in with the nervousness is always excitement. No matter how short the trip I almost always love making it. I am, you might say, enamored of travel.

I was even on Sunday, with several hours to kill at O’Hare, the busiest airport in the world. (Did I know this? I do now. Banners and promos proclaim it.)

Yesterday, I found someone else who feels the same way:

“How many times I’ve relished the private thrill of a foreign place where you know no one, speak a handful of words, where even the street signs throw you off balance,” writes Frances Mayes in A Place in the World. “How you feel your mind open to the new. How you set forth, all synapses crackling with curiosity. … Travel is a privilege because it gives you the world you were not given.”

The world not given. That’s it, exactly.