On a recent flight, I decided to reread Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, the book that kickstarted my wanderlust years ago.
That flight brought back memories of all the places I’ve explored, the unbelievable people I’ve met, and the different cultures I’ve experienced along the way. It made me grateful for adventures in the past and excited for more in the future.
Traveling is an investment in yourself. The further you travel from home, the more your mind will expand with the breadth of experiences and lessons you encounter along the way.
Travel gives you a sense of confidence that can’t be developed if you’ve never left home. The process of going somewhere new, learning your surroundings, meeting new people, understanding new cultures, and facing obstacles that come up along the way can only be learned on the road.
There is no better feeling than knowing you can arrive in any foreign country, not speak the language, not know anyone, and feel completely comfortable exploring around. Your adaptability is an attitude that stays with you long after you return home.
Traveling, especially when you are young, will enrich your life in more ways than most realize.
We are all born with a curiosity to travel and explore the world around us. If you have the desire to travel the world, make it happen. Most people let their inner explorers die from years of neglect and not taking the chances they have.
There is never a perfect time to travel. You make time in your schedule, choose the destination, and just go. The money and time spent traveling is an investment in yourself, towards living a life you’ll remember.
Don’t Fool Yourself Like The Desert Fathers
In the book, Potts recalls a story about the tradition of the Desert Fathers, a group of Christian monks that lived in the wastelands of Egypt over 1,700 years ago.
Two monks named Theodore and Lucius had a strong desire to see the world, but they were bound by their vows of contemplation and not allowed to go on their journey.
To satisfy their inner travel bugs, they start fooling themselves by saying to each other “We will leave in the winter.” When the winter came, they would tell each other, “We will leave in the summer.”
They did this for 50 years until their stories came to an end, never once leaving the monastery. They fooled themselves for an entire lifetime, pushing their dreams into the future indefinitely until it was too late.
“Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.”
Henry David Thoreau
We are not monks, but most of us choose to live like one. We like to tell ourselves and the people around us that we’d love to see the world but never make concrete plans or take the opportunity when it comes up. We fall into a state of drift, using the comforts of our home, job, and busy routine as a way to fool ourselves and justify putting our dreams off, just like the Desert Fathers did.
When we become adults and enter the real world, we are free to do whatever we want for the first time in our lives. No longer bound by a school schedule, no longer living with parents, and no longer dependent on anyone else. We are now the captains of our own ship, free to sail off in any direction we want.
Then a funny thing happens. Despite our freedom to go after our dreams, we begin to trick ourselves into going nowhere.
We tell ourselves “It’s too risky to travel right now, we have to sacrifice a few years to build a foundation in our careers and make some money first then we can go anywhere we want!”
So we get a job at a company where we have the same routine, do the same tasks, and have the same conversations with the same people for years until we can’t tolerate the job anymore and our travel bug begins to itch again.
We start thinking “This would be a great opportunity to finally explore the world like I’ve always dreamed of!”
Then we trick ourselves again by immediately finding a new job with higher pay, more responsibilities, and less free time because it’s a good career opportunity and will give us the “freedom” in the future to go anywhere we want.
Start to see a pattern?
A few more years go by. We happily accept promotions, higher pay, and more responsibility because that’s what success looks like, right? We start to inflate our lifestyles to make our jobs more tolerable. Despite believing we are moving towards a life of freedom, we trap ourselves in a never-ending rat race.
Now we are growing tired of our mundane routine and want to experience something new. Maybe find a new job, start a business, or move to a different city. But all this time we have never once considered putting ourselves first, to satisfy our desire to go after our dreams. It’s just always too risky and the timing never seems right.
This pattern repeats for the rest of our lives, never accomplishing what we truly want (travel or otherwise). We spend years chasing money and status while wasting the unlimited choices we have in front of us until it’s too late and the best chapters of our lives have ended.
If we’re lucky enough to make it to a typical retirement age, we allow ourselves to spend our hard-earned money when it’s least valuable to us because of our declining health and limited energy.
We fall into the trap of living how other people expect us to live, following the predictable path that our peers are taking, and avoiding the risks of going for what we actually want. In our minds, we tell ourselves that it’s too “risky” and we shouldn’t do it because nobody else is and we fear looking like a failure.
In reality, the only real risk is the regret of never trying to fulfill your dreams when it’s too late.
If you have the desire to go out and travel the world (or do anything else for that matter), find time to make it happen (before starting a career, in between jobs, or taking some extended time off) and take the leap. You will come back energized with a new perspective on life.
Don’t fool yourself for a lifetime like the Desert Fathers did.
Travel For A Richer Life
In today’s day and age, it’s never been easier to venture outside of your bubble and see how the rest of the world lives.
The convenience and affordability of modern-day flights have unlocked the ability for people to travel to the furthest parts of the world in less than a day.
Traveling helps create a richer life. It enriches your mind and gives you perspective on the rest of the world. In the process, you become a more interesting person as well.
I’m surprised how often my thoughts are influenced by past travel experiences and the randomest things that have happened while on the road.
The simple act of visiting a new place, meeting new people, and doing new things will open your mind to a whole new pool of ideas you cannot come up with if you’re stuck in a mundane routine back home.
Where you visit, who you meet, and what you do is less important than just going, meeting, and doing something different than what you’re used to.
Good ideas are created from past experiences that your mind draws on as inspiration. This can happen at random moments of the day while you’re on a walk, sitting in traffic on a commute, or even taking a shower.
Having incredible experiences helps create that archive of memories the mind can use to shape the thoughts and ideas that can change your life.
Show me someone who has a breadth of travel experience and I’ll show you an interesting person who has worldly life experience. Travel helps you connect with other people and develop bonds simply because they may have had similar experiences or dream of having those experiences.
The person who has explored the world inspires others to go on their own adventures and come back with stories they can recount with nostalgia. Beats the same old boring small talk about work, the weather, and how weekends were that most people resort to because there is nothing else exciting to talk about.
Two Completely Different Experiences
My advice is to travel as much as possible when you’re young, healthy, and have few responsibilities. Invest in a memorable life.
Front-load your travel experiences early in life, that way you get to enjoy the memories for many more years. Think back to a past trip with friends, family, or even yourself. I bet that brought a smile to your face just reliving that past experience in your mind.
Now think about multiplying that joy by all the other memory investments you’ve accumulated over your lifetime.
That’s a guaranteed way to be much more fulfilled at the end of it all.
This is the exact opposite of how most people put off their travel, believing they will have more freedom in the future and better experiences with more money.
First: Traveling Takes Practice
Like getting in shape, it requires you to get started now because the longer you put it off, the less likely you will do it in the future.
You have to develop the skills and your own process for travel which can only be learned through repetition.
Thinking you can just get up and start roaming around the world once you’re retired, without putting in the practice early in life, is just silly.
You wouldn’t enter a marathon tomorrow if you’ve never run a mile in your life.
Second: Travel Is Not Equal For All Ages
You can only travel a certain way while you are young and can take full advantage of your health and energy.
There’s only a certain period in life when you can (and want to) go on cheap adventures, sprinting from place to place on a few hours of sleep and an adrenaline rush. Once that chapter of your life closes, it’s gone forever.
A month in a foreign country for a 20 year old is far different than a month for a 60 year old, even if it’s the same amount of time. The experience is completely different since you can do everything and anything if you’re young and healthy but lose some of that freedom the older you get.
As you become older, travel naturally becomes more predictable and family-friendly. This is a normal part of life and there’s nothing wrong with that. But make no mistake, the type of trips that you can go on while you’re young will no longer be available to you.
I’ve never met anyone who regretted traveling too much when they were young, but I know plenty of people who deeply regret not traveling more before they had a family and before their peak years slipped away.
Lastly: Don’t Wait To Travel Until You “Have More Money”
A lot of people put off travel because they think they will have a better experience when they’re older with more money.
Yes, while it’s true a 60 year old will have more money than a 20 year old, they may still have a lesser experience. Your expectations are much lower when you’re young and everything is an adventure. You don’t need to spend much to have incredible experiences. You don’t care about cheap economy flights, bumpy buses, lively hostels, and walking everywhere on foot since it all adds to your adventure.
There is always an opportunity in the future to experience luxury travel when you’re old and need the comforts that more money can provide. But you cannot go back to younger versions of yourself and enjoy the same experiences that you could have had with less money.
At the end of the day, traveling while young does not have to be expensive but the experiences you can have are priceless.
As Thoreau said, it’s foolish to spend the majority of our best years when we’re young earning money to enjoy it when it’s least valuable to us when we’re old.
Go out and see the world. Make the time and take the leap because there is never a “perfect time” and you are not getting any younger.
You’ll live a far richer and more interesting life if you do.
See you on the road.