It was the middle of May, spring 2005. I had just graduated from Winona State University, a small university in Winona, a little town in southeastern Minnesota. I already had grand plans to pack everything I owned into my '97 Chevy Cavalier and head to the Big Apple, New York City. When I had finished packing my coupe car, there was only space for me; not even room to push the seat back for more legroom. It didn’t matter that I might get a stiff back and neck.

I was on the verge of my first solo road trip. I was sad to say goodbye to friends and the flat prairie landscape and farmlands of the Midwest that I called home for about three and a half years. However, the prospect of driving through the Appalachian Mountains and the Hudson River Valley made my goodbyes easier. Once I got past Chicago and spent the night at a Motel 6 somewhere in Indiana, my excitement was hard to contain.

A few minutes of anxiety about what awaited me in the hustle and bustle of New York faded away once it dawned on me that I was living the childhood dream of roadtripping across the United States. ‘90s road trip movies like Tommy Boy, Dumb & Dumber, and Kingpin sparked my fascination with hitting the road with a vast country ahead of me.

I grew up in Malaysia, a country only slightly bigger than the state of Montana. Road tripping in Malaysia meant getting stuck in traffic with few options to reroute your trip. I did get stuck in traffic closer to New York City, but while on the I-90 from Minnesota, going through the Midwest, playing some of my favorite road trip songs, such as Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” and Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” gave me a sense of freedom only a naive 20 year old could yearn for.

Life’s more existential problems hadn’t hit me yet, and my feelings and mindset at the time were likely influenced by Hollywood road trip movies I saw as a kid growing up in Malaysia. It felt like anything was possible for an international student in a land branded as a land of possibilities.

Traveling over a thousand miles, cruising open roads, and feeling the vastness of space is not something you can experience in many parts of the world, unless you have an unbridled imagination. The human need to migrate is natural, and looking back at this experience and the current state of the world makes me wonder whether the tightening of global borders will suppress this natural impulse in our human condition.

In 2005, the world was a very different place. The United States and the world were still dealing with the realities of a post-9/11 world, and looking back, it was the beginning of borders tightening in the Western world. When I arrived in New York, almost every bodega, newsstand, restaurant, or small business had employed undocumented workers. While living in New York for a year, I often wondered how the city would function without its undocumented workers.

Fast-forward 20 years, and the current government of the United States is more than ready to test whether major urban centers can withstand losing undocumented migrants. Their journey, of course, is very different from mine. Their stakes are higher than a college graduate hitting the road for the first time. Their dreams are tied to providing a better life for their families in the face of uncertainty.

Global borders and the policing of them have become a norm. Maps used to be art pieces of what the world was perceived to be, but today they are elements of power and proof that territory has been claimed. With over eight billion people on this planet, the way we move is varied in this modern world. A good number of us travel and take leisurely vacations, others have the means to migrate to new countries, and some still have to take big risks to flee political instability or economic disparity.

What happens when borders continue to tighten up in the West and other countries that want to protect their resources, culture, and national interests? The answers are hard to predict, but what is certain is that our species' need for migration is natural. We have been doing it even before nation states were formed in the post-colonial era.

Genetic, fossil, and archaeological evidence have led many scientists to believe that the first humans or homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and into Asia about 80,000 to 60,000 years ago, and later to Europe about 40,000 years ago. The theories of human migration vary during this period and will continue to evolve.

However, if you need more contemporary proof that we are a migratory species, there was the migration period in the continent of Europe, when various Germanic tribes migrated into the Roman Empire (300 to 600 AD), or the Age of Exploration and Colonialism that shaped the continents of Asia, Africa, Australasia, Europe, and the Americas.

Migration is the reason we have Chinatowns, Little Italys, Little Indias, Greek Days in Vancouver, Caribbean Carnivals in Toronto, the vibrant Japanese town of Liberdade in Sao Paulo, and the German mountain town of La Cumbrecita in the southwest of Cordoba in Argentina. Like many other species living on this earth, humans move.

Train tracks needed to be built in the United States, coffee plantations needed labor in Brazil, rubber needed to be tapped in Malaysia, a potato famine devastated towns and cities, and religious persecution caused people to flee. It’s natural to seek greener pastures, a safe place to start a family, and our ancestors have been doing it for a long time.

It, however, looks like we’re running out of space to move. Or maybe it’s a transitional phase where another nation or continent becomes the new land of milk and honey, where open highways give way to the opportunity to feel the freedom of the open road. New patterns of human migration might be dictated by new immigration rules, geopolitical wrangling, technology, and the state of the planet's environment. But rewiring thousands of years of human nature to migrate, travel, and be curious about their planet will likely not happen anytime soon.

I moved to New York for the opportunity to find work as a writer, and fulfill the need of my curious mind to live in a city where the possibility of listening to 5 different languages while walking a block is a reality, and having a Mariachi band turn your bad day around when they perform right in front of you in the subway car you’re sitting in.

My need to move around is privileged, and I have continued to do so. I have since moved to British Columbia in Canada, for further schooling and work opportunities. I have moved around the world, and the people I share this planet with have continued to do the same.

Flying is the preferred mode of travel or migration, but you still hear stories in the news of people braving the ocean waves on makeshift rafts or using the traditional mode of transportation, on foot, to trek across thousands of miles in the hopes of finding new homes and opportunities.

Our need for greener pastures is likely tied to a primal instinct. It’s tied to our need for safety, belonging, self-actualization, and all that is physiological. As living standards have improved in many parts of the world, a portion of the world’s population may have gradually suppressed this instinct. Maybe a day will come when a majority of us will find contentment in our little towns and communities. Small sustainable communities, populated by people with low carbon footprints, imagine that?

But looking back at my solo road trip from Winona, Minnesota, to New York City, I remember moments when my car was the only one on the open road. This feeling lasted at most for about a minute. I remember taking in one of these minutes, somewhere in the Midwest, wide open fields to the left and right of me, miles of road ahead of me, and a sunset sky similar to one captured in a Terrence Malick movie.

It’s moments when your mind can take a break from life’s modern routines, get back to imagination, the possibility of abundance that comes with it, and just be. This moment has no future, but reminds you of hope and possibly faith, that to be in motion of travel is freeing, and a very human trait.