Revisiting Travel
The first post I published on More To That was called Travel Is No Cure for the Mind. It took me over 100 hours to do, and was the result of me reflecting on the nature of my experiences abroad. I particularly thought about how I felt when I was in Asia for 6 months, and the ebbs and flows of various emotions that I experienced during my time there.
When I hit publish, I recall thinking that it was a solid piece, and maybe a couple hundred people would read it. I had no audience then, so even that seemed like a stretch.
Well, what actually happened was beyond my wildest expectations.
Over 1 million people have gone on to read that piece, and I believe it’s still one of the most popular stories to ever be published on Medium. Around once a year, it’ll go viral again when someone shares it on social media, which will reliably generate all kinds of commentary from people that either hate it or love it.
It’s important to note that the vast majority of my work doesn’t reach this kind of popularity. But when it does, I gain interesting insight as to what people liked about the piece, and what they found concerning. When it came to the people that liked the piece, they resonated with the core argument that travel would not resolve any of the inner discontentment they had with their lives. That traveling could represent a temporary respite in the form of novelty, but once that novelty wore off, all of their prior tumult would have no choice but to resurface again.
The people that disliked the piece found my take on travel to be dismissive. The general sentiment was that I missed the point of why people travel in the first place. That people don’t travel to run away from their problems, but rather to open up a new lens they could use to view the world. That when you purchase a plane ticket to a faraway land, you’re giving yourself permission to allow curiosity to re-take the helm in a way that sitting in a cubicle on day-to-day basis simply cannot.
These are fair points. In fact, I agree with most of them. But of course, truth lives in nuance, and you have to explore these nuances to get a clearer picture of what I was communicating.
Let’s first start with the point that people don’t travel to run away from their problems. This is true, but only partially. Because if you think about it, there really are only 3 reasons why you travel (that are not work-related):
(1) You have loved ones in other countries you want to visit,
(2) You are curious about cultures and surroundings that are not your own,
(3) You are looking for novel experiences to break the monotony of daily life.
Reason #1 is less about cultural immersion, and more about spending time with your family and friends. Of course, part of your time together may be spent learning about unfamiliar customs and traditions, but the main purpose is to maximize the time you spend with your loved ones.
For example, whenever I go to Korea to visit my parents, I don’t spend too much time sightseeing or trying out various restaurants. I eat most meals at home with my folks, given that they’re the reason for my trip. The novelty of cultural immersion is far less important than the consistency of time I get with them.
Reason #2 is the one that detractors of my piece will point to with a huge red arrow sign. Many critics of my piece often point to how I neglected travel’s ability to open up new perspectives of seeing the world. That if we didn’t travel, we’d all be ignorant of the diversity that exists outside of our little patriotic bubbles. After all, the person that has never left his country will say that his country is the best one in the world.
Here’s the thing: I completely agree with Reason #2. Travel is one of the greatest expressions of curiosity across our species, and has led to a level of flourishing that would be unreachable if we all stayed within our borders. If you are curious about immersing yourself in a foreign culture because you want to be more aware of your own blind spots, then absolutely do it. If you want to feel the discomfort that comes with expanding your mind, then book that plane ticket and be open to all the surprises that come with it.
But here’s where a caveat must be issued: Be honest with yourself that this is why you’re traveling. Expanding your perspectives of the world is not supposed to be a super pleasant, comfortable process. In fact, I’d say that the level of your comfort is inversely correlated with how much your mind is being expanded.
This is why taking a 7-day cruise ship around the coastline of some popular tourist destination is not a form of curiosity-driven travel. The goal of a cruise is to keep you as comfortable as possible while introducing small hits of novelty to create the illusion that you’re “traveling.” Your introduction to any new cultures is confined within a bubble of familiarity that’s been carefully engineered to shield you from fear.
When you really immerse yourself in a foreign culture, it should be a bit scary. That’s because real immersion happens when you realize how fragile your accustomed norms are. And it’s only through your commitment to breaking them where you really use travel as a gateway to expand your intellectual horizons.
The reality is that most people don’t travel like this, and fall under Reason #3. Travel is a vacation destination, a tool you use to fill up idle time. Sure, you get to see more of the world, but what you’re really seeing is a new environment filled with your old projections. You want food to taste close to what you’re familiar with. You want to visit the places that will look best on Instagram. Aside from knowing how to say “hello” or “thank you,” you have no desire to speak in the native tongue.
When travel is used as a vehicle to break the monotony of life, then don’t be surprised when that sense of monotony finds itself to whatever newfound place you’re visiting. A curious mindset doesn’t ignite just because your surroundings have changed. Rather, it’s something to be cultivated in your current state – in your day-to-day life – whether you’re working in a cubicle or having the 1,000th meal in your apartment or home. Instead of trying to break away from this, use that desire for escape as a signal for you to look deeper at your life as it is today. Nothing is as mundane as you believe it to be; all you need to do is look closer.
Travel is no cure for the mind because there is no cure for it to begin with. There is no external vehicle that will take you to prolonged contentment. What truly brings contentment is internal: gratitude for what’s in front of you, openness to all the stories around you, and unwavering curiosity toward the people you see everyday.
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