I remember a friend who would talk about a cabin in Norway, far north, where she imagined winters with auroras dancing across the sky. She had never been, she wasn’t planning to go, and yet she described it as vividly as if she had lived there. She carried it with her every day. She carried leaving inside her. And it made her lighter somehow — even if her body never moved, her mind had.
Leaving isn’t always literal. Sometimes it’s about perspective. We imagine life elsewhere, other selves, other choices, other possibilities. And the act of dreaming about leaving is, in itself, a journey. It loosens us from routines, makes the familiar strange, makes the ordinary extraordinary. It whispers that change is possible, that the world is wider than our current view.
And sometimes, we do leave. We book a flight, we buy a ticket, we walk out the door. But often, the leaving stays in imagination only. And that’s okay. Dreams about leaving are powerful precisely because they are free from logistics. You can be anywhere, do anything, feel anything — without the weight of luggage or money or calendars.
There’s also a melancholy in it, of course. Dreaming of leaving can make the present feel smaller, ordinary, even suffocating. But that’s part of its power. It makes us notice what we love, what we want, what we can’t find where we are. It makes us curious. It reminds us that even walls, streets, and routines can be questioned, reimagined, and, sometimes, left behind.
I think we dream about leaving because we want to see the world with fresh eyes. Not because the world is bad, but because we need it to feel different, alive, unpredictable. Because we need to remember that life is bigger than comfort zones, that curiosity exists even in the smallest corners, that adventure isn’t only about distance — it’s about openness.
And maybe the most remarkable thing is this: even if we never leave, the dreaming leaves us changed. It colors our mornings, our conversations, the way we walk through familiar streets. It makes us pause, notice, imagine. The mind travels, even when the feet do not.
So the next time you catch yourself imagining leaving — a city, a routine, a life — pay attention. Don’t dismiss it as mere daydreaming. It’s your mind stretching, exploring, discovering. It’s the reminder that the world is vast, your life is more than the walls around you, and even from here, you can begin to wander.
Leaving may be imaginary, but its effect is real. And that, maybe, is the point.