Why is Travel Important?
Why does anyone travel?
Why do we feel called to get up and go, and leave home in our rearview mirror? For those of you with a fire under your seat and itches in your feet, dreaming of faraway places is second nature.
We travel, not because we are discontent with where we currently are in life, but because there is a deep instinct in every person to seek and experience the unknown. People are always seeking, always changing, always restless, and our curiosity has no bounds. That restlessness is expressed in different ways, but for many, it takes shape in the ache to MOVE, to travel!
In my case, I was the weirdo in high school who joked I was going to be a truck driver one day, just so that I wouldn’t have to be in one place more than a day. I would lay awake at night dreaming of catching trains in Europe for a living.
And I did make it happen, in a way! I studied abroad in Rome, took a year off of college to work in Austria as an Au Pair (meanwhile catching all those trains I had dreamed of) and worked at Grand Canyon National Park. After college, I moved to Colorado to work at a dude ranch and ride horses, became a photographer at a ski resort without any previous photography experience, which led to guiding whitewater rafting trips in Maine for a summer, which led to beaching it at Cape Cod for several months. I still don’t know how it happened! Right now, I am sitting somewhere I truly had never imagined myself to be-- living and writing on a sky-scraping balcony in beautiful Honolulu overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Bizarre and wonderful things happen when you are determined to travel.
Not everyone wants to or is able to make travel their lifestyle or priority in life. It is not necessarily the most lucrative, stable, or comforting option. (Don’t I know it…) It may not be as dreamy and glamorous as many make it out to be. In fact, I am a far, far cry from a glamorous traveller. I cannot tell you how many nights I slept in my beat up Honda Civic, wrapped sloppily in a sleeping bag in the driver’s seat.
“I am a far, far cry from a glamorous traveller. I cannot tell you how many nights I slept in my beat up Honda Civic, wrapped sloppily in a sleeping bag in the driver’s seat.”
Traveling means something different to everyone, and we all have different styles and ideas of where and how to do it. But why is travel important to each of us?
Let me tell you why traveling is a cornerstone to a complete lifestyle.
It gets You out of your comfort zone
Travel opens up doors you never imagined.
Although it can be tough and exhausting to travel, there is one thing about it that is amazing. It pushes you-- To do things you never thought you yourself would do, to see things you never thought you would see, to meet people you never thought you would meet.
Those of us that are a little too much in our shell, a little too comfortable, a little too reluctant to venture outside our social circle and bubble-- travel breaks down those boundaries. Being happy where you are is amazing, but there is something to say about settling too soon. You learn alot about yourself, the world, and the silly human beings populating it by travelling. It builds experience, courage, self-confidence, initiative, and social skills.
Wherever you fall on the spectrum of being comfortable or uncomfortable coming out of your bubble, you can only benefit from opening your eyes to the world’s diversity.
Learn to DO, instead of think
Travel inspires us to move and act boldly, as I said in the previous point, and travel turns dreamers into make-it-come-truers.
During travel, YOU make it happen, YOU make the moves, YOU decide if you catch the train or take a chance on a new friendship or pick this activity or that. The rest of the world is still turning, people in Buenos Aires and Hong Kong are still moving about their normal lives even if you are there visiting, and you are the one who will go out on your own, or with friends, to discover the world as it revolves around you. That is the amazing part! You get to witness and experience cultures and peoples other than your own.
It is scary to start-- if you are a dreamer, you may have become too comfortable daydreaming and imagining what it would be like, instead of making the necessary steps to actually make it come true. Taking the first step is hardest, but after that, it snowballs into ease.
Time to reflect on yourself and grow
With distance comes physical relief and relaxation, but even more importantly, mental distance and reflection. Sometimes what we need is a step back, to think about where we are in life and how we got to this moment and place.
Travel does change you. If you put enough of your heart into your adventures, learn to bend with inevitable, unexpected misadventures, and really follow your instincts to explore the places and experiences you have a burning desire to see and do -- it really does set you free in a way.
Something about sitting by the side of the gentle Seine in a cafe in Paris, or clearing peaks in Montana and watching the sunset in silence, brings out self-reflection. Quiet moments like these can be very valuable to mental peace and contemplation.
You make memories that are worth remembering
Who doesn’t love great travel stories? You get into all sorts of trouble while galavanting about places you’ve never been, and (usually) it is the misadventures that prove to be more valuable, comical, and memorable than anything you had meticulously planned.
Once, while I was working on a farm in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, I was invited to a sweat lodge ceremony, as several locals still practiced this ancient Native American ritual of spiritual cleansing. I couldn’t say “No” to that, could I? It was something I had read about in history textbooks. So I donned the old nightgown that someone threw at me, crawled into “the womb” of Mother Earth, and participated in a cultural rite that I now have respect for (if still flabbergasted by). It was pitch black and sweltering, and I swear, someone kept throwing herbs at me from across the smoldering coals.
Along with memories, you will create or strengthen friendships and relationships. Travel with people that you truly want to invest in and that you love, because experiencing new things together is hands-down a bonding experience. Travel is tough, and it (kinda) makes you or breaks you. So pick the right travel buddies :) Travel also opens the opportunities to meet fascinating individuals from all walks of life.
Travel is an end in itself. Not just a means to an end.
One of the top reasons people travel is to “find themselves.” By itself, that is an enormous quest every person must embark on in their lifetime. Some have to jump through more hoops for self-discovery; for others, it comes more naturally. “Finding yourself” through travel is in quotations because it is most often a hope, not a reality. I know from personal experience.
Travel is viewed as an escape, and if you aren’t loving where you are at right now, you tend to think: “If only I were somewhere else, I would be happy.” Let me tell you now-- that can be a never-ending trap. To some extent, travel could absolutely be the right answer to escape a negative situation back at home. Please leave if you feel like you should.
But if you rely on constant relocating and moving to be happy, you may be fooling yourself. You will never want to settle and you will never feel satisfied, because there is always another rainbow, another waterfall, another country and city, another group of friends, another job, another life waiting for you just out of sight and out of touch. If you never let yourself be satisfied with your current situation in life, you will never be happy. You will forever be seeking that next destination, and never finding it.
What we are trying to say: As wonderful as travel is, don’t let travel become your only escape. There is more to travel.
Travel started as an escape for me, personally, to run from an unsettling restlessness inside. I felt lost, was seeking self-discovery, and became addicted to chasing the next train station and the next mountain and the next city. That, by itself, did nothing for my happiness. I realized slowly that I was deriving no meaning from what I was experiencing. I felt like a ghost flitting over Europe without purpose, running in circles like a chicken without a head, and, controversially, I was actually bored. I had started out feeling lost and lonely, and that only compounded as I wandered.
What changed? I started to listen more to my instincts and tune in with myself and my long-term life goals. I stopped traveling for the sake of travel, and started traveling for the sake of experiencing things I believed I could grow and learn from, to work on different parts of myself (that sorely needed it). I started to WWOOF (World Wide Organization of Organic Farming) all over the United States, to get back in touch with nature and find my roots in the earth.
I met incredible people and dove into random communities, working and living with locals to see how their stories unfolded in such a different part of the world than my own. I put more of myself into relationships and friendships I made along the way-- and this became huge. To my initial frustration, it was people that made the biggest difference in my happiness while traveling. I found several best friends along the way, invested myself and time into them, shared my experiences with them, and these are the memories and people in my life I treasure most. I also started to write as I roamed, which I find purpose in. Travel changed my perspective, just as my perspective changed as I traveled (and continues to change to this day).
Maybe you already knew why travel is important to you; maybe this blog strengthened your conviction; maybe you’re not even reading this anymore because you’re already out the front door with hiking boots and backpack in hand.
I am also not trying to give you FOMO! We all know traveling is difficult, a little impossible, right now. But sometime in the future, when travel becomes more accessible, don’t forget to put travel at the top of your list of priorities. It is important.
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