I’m not sure there’s anyone that doesn’t enjoy a good holiday, a change of scenery, a story to tell upon return of how amazing it was to see some other part of the world. But travelling…it’s a whole other ball game. It’s more than a couple of weeks in Majorca, or a city break in Paris. It’s a chance to really see what the world has to offer, it’s a chance to understand. Perhaps you’re considering a gap year, or a retirement adventure, or maybe you’re reading with travelling fixed in your mind as nothing more than a dream, an unrealistic fantasy, thanks to that 9 to 5 job.
Either way, what you should know, and what everyone should know, is how much better you can be and feel if you let that dream become a reality.
Life’s a game, you should have fun playing it
Following suit is the safe option. Being comfortable and secure is easy, it’s the life you’ve been brought up to expect. An office job, an alright salary, a holiday once a year where you see only what every other tourist sees. But why not put that on hold for a year or so?
Go back a street or two from the tacky gift shops, ignore the overpriced ‘guided stroll’ and discover the world for yourself, find your own path. Scrabble up hills, over rocks, climb trees, take your adventure down a path no one has taken before. Maybe you’ll be out of your comfort zone, embrace it! Change is one of the healthiest things we can experience. Of course being comfortable is nice, but change is where the excitement happens.
Find new love in culture, art, scenery, everywhere you can! Bored of life? Go somewhere new but don’t just visit it, live it. Take it all in, look up at the sublime of your surroundings and realise ‘shit, nothing else matters right now.’ Knowing when to stop worrying about things that are really quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and just enjoy the moment, is an incredible skill to have.
That job, or another that’s almost identical, will always be there waiting for you. You only get one life, and however long you take out of the rat race, there’ll always be time for you to jump back into it. It’s jumping out that’s the hard part.
Living is understanding, and understanding is knowledge
All our lives we’re brought up to understand our society and the world we live in. We’re taught what’s right, and what’s wrong; what we can say, and what we shouldn’t. We grow up thinking that what we know equates to worldly understanding, but in reality, the only views and ways we know are those of our own society. We have no idea what lies across the borders, until we go there that is.
Can we really claim to know the world until we’ve seen it, and not just printed on the pages of an atlas? No. And that’s where travelling comes in. Each journey will be more of a lesson than any you’ve had in your years of schooling. Perhaps if politicians had travelled, there’d be no global tension over differing views or cultures, there would instead be understanding, and appreciation of variety – but politics is a whole other subject.
So can we even fully understand our own community without seeing where we stand in relation to the rest of the world?Undoubtedly not, and that’s where so many arguments will arise between those who have seen all they can, and those who have seen only that in front of them. With understanding comes intelligence.
‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’
Sure there’s all the amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but at some point during your travels you’ll stop and think for a second of home, and for a moment (or maybe more) you’ll miss it.
You’ll miss your family, your friends, familiar surroundings, but get this, that’s not a bad thing! It seems insane right? To be missing the way your dog jumps up to greet you, or your family bickering around the table.
But that’s half the reason why you should go. To quote Bon Jovi, ‘who says you cant go home?’ And when you do return, having spent time both alone and meeting new people, you’ll realise just how important the places and people that you call ‘home’ are to you. And then not only will you have hours worth of stories to tell but you’ll appreciate more than ever the people you’re telling them to, and the sofa you’re sitting on when you do so.
Make your life a story worth reading
When you take a step back and look at the chapters of your life already gone, and think of the pages to come, you realise that doing everything you can is more important than anything.
Going travelling will leave you with so many memories to cheer you up on the darker days, and so many stories to tell if the conversation starts to run dry. Be that person that talks obsessively of what they’ve done and where they’ve been, and be proud of it.
You’ll have those memories for the rest of your life, you’ll have the stories behind the faded photographs, and you’ll have the grandkids gathered round listening to how you climbed a mountain in France or went scuba diving in Peru. Don’t just holiday, travel. You’ll have lived a novel-worthy life.
Or if you’re not a fan of the literature comparison, think of it in terms of music – if each journey is a song, don’t just stick to a single, make it an album.
I live in the UK, in the country’s most uneventful city, where the most interesting story in the local paper is about banning dressing gowns in supermarkets.
I travel and I write, because surely there are more interesting stories than that to write about and share.
