Why I Travel

I recently got an email from a sweet friend and dedicated reader passing along a blog post of one of her friends explaining why she travelled.

I was obviously immediately intrigued by the exercise of overtly considering this and wanted to see what I come up with before reading her post.

So let’s see what happens.

I think, while there are many interesting angles to take that all strike similar tunes, at its core, it could be said that I travel because I like to understand things in different contexts. Obviously, acquainting oneself with a different culture provides a plethora of opportunities for the practice of this.

I travel because it makes more sense to me than not travelling.

I travel because a breath taking landscape is hands down worth a 15 hour flight.

I travel because I want to have a broader and deeper perspective of the world.

I travel because I love people. I love learning about them, how they think, how they feel, what their lives are like, why, how it affects them, how they see the world, their hopes, their dreams, their sufferings, their joys, their priorities, their goals. Traveling is basically a carte blanche to wander and talk to as many people as possible.

I travel because traveling lets me focus on the overarching aspects of life that I want to think and learn about and perspectively minimizes all the nitty gritty details of the daily grind of life back home that are all too easy to get caught up in. Travelling seems to have a knack for stimulating thoughts (ha, although I haven’t been super stimulated here, although that’s another story) about existence and purpose and life and what’s important and all that good stuff ☺

I travel because I like the way of life in developing countries. Prefer it even. I like simple kitchens and clothes lines and fans and bug nets and bucket baths and wicker brooms. It’s not that I’m trying to escape technology, but rather that it’s really important for me to feel connected to things and this way of life is so much more fluid and connected with nature; there’s less transition between inside and outside, it all just….flows. That jives with me really well.

To be honest, there’s a part of me that has been re-evaluating why I travel since I’ve been here in India. I think I’m beginning to realize that part of the reason I derived so much joy, liberation, stimulation, from travelling was because previously I was fairly dissatisfied with my life. It was an escape in some ways. A breath of fresh air that I was eager to fill my lungs with. Aside from feeling pressured to do my professor a favor, half the reason I went back to Uganda last summer was I recognized how much healthier I was there and I wanted to feel that again.
These days, life’s been great. Better learning to chose to be happy is such an awesome thing! It's not just that things in my life have been going really well (although, they have), but I’m a lot happier with the person that I am; I believe in myself so much more, trust myself so much more. That's helped me to embrace myself and let love in so much more. Not that I’m complacently content or delusionally happy, I’m still just as determined and ambitious as ever, but I’m eager and excited about life and the future now, rather than anxiously grasping the future by the neck and being like, “you must work out!!” Being here, travelling, hasn’t left me yearning for my life back home, luckily my confidence is internationally translatable so I don’t feel the need to be in a particular place, but, I guess the only way to describe it is that I’m less like a dog that’s been caged up all day that finally gets to run around outside. Consequently, I’ve been more discerning of the pros and cons of travelling and living here. I apparently can’t seem to succinctly find my bottom line here, but hopefully I’m making some sense.