Exactly one month from today, I will be arriving in London, sleepy from a long red-eye flight but brimming with the adrenaline rush of a new experience. From there, I will be traveling throughout Europe for two months, exploring Germany, Italy, and France.
I have traveled outside of the United States before, but this will be the first time that I am traveling alone. It will also be the first time that I have spent an extended period of time (longer than a week) outside of the United States.
This trip has been many months in the making, and as the date gets closer, my anxiety around the trip has started to build. It is not an unbearable anxiety, the type that inhibits you from taking action, but rather it is an eager anxiety, reminding me that this trip is really happening.
To calm my mind, I started reading The School of Life’s guide titled How To Travel, a collection of 30 essays on the various psychological and philosophical elements to consider while traveling. The very first essay provided me with an entirely new way of thinking about my trip; here’s an excerpt from the book:
“The destination we find ourselves drawn to reflects an underlying sense of what is currently missing or under-supported in our lives. We are seeking, through our travels, not just to see new places, but also to become fuller, more complete beings. The destination promises to correct imbalances in our psyches, for we are all inevitably a little lacking or excessive in one area or another. The place we go to should, ideally, help to teach us certain lessons that we know we need to hear. Our destinations are a guide to, and a goad for, who we are trying to become.”
When thinking of my trip through this lens, I started asking myself: why am I really going on this trip? What is currently missing from my life that I am trying to fill?
The reality is that I’ve spent the better portion of my 20s in a state of limbo. My early 20s were spent living at my parents’ house, commuting to and from the city every day for work. During that time, I desperately wanted to be able to live in the city. After two years of living at my parents’ house, I finally had the financial means to move to the city, but not too long after, COVID struck. During the on-again-off-again lockdowns, I—along with everyone else—was waiting for a certain level of freedom to be able to enjoy life again. Now that COVID (for the most part) has passed, I find myself in my mid-20s searching for the next phase—finding a significant other, moving into my own apartment, maybe buying a house, maybe moving to a new city.
And so when I think about what is missing from my life and how my travels reflect what is missing, I can’t help but feel like this trip in particular is my way of pushing myself into a new phase. It’s not until we remove ourselves from everything that is familiar—our routines, our friends, our family, our local coffee shops and supermarkets—that we find who we really are.
There is a quote from Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus that sums this up perfectly:
“Without cafés and newspapers, it would be difficult to travel. A paper printed in our own language, a place to rub shoulders with others in the evenings enable us to imitate the familiar gestures of the man we were at home, who, seen from a distance, seems so much a stranger. For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. One can no longer cheat — hide behind the hours spent at the office or at the plant (those hours we protest so loudly, which protect us so well from the pain of being alone). I have always wanted to write novels in which my heroes would say: “What would I do without the office?” or again: “My wife has died, but fortunately I have all these orders to fill for tomorrow.” Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn’t know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves. But also, soul-sick, we restore to every being and every object its miraculous value.” [1]
This line in particular—“For what gives value to travel is fear”—is the line that stands out to me the most. As with any great adventure, there must be something at risk. Frodo takes the ring to Mount Doom, Odysseus sets sail to fight in the Trojan War, Huckleberry Finn runs away down the Mississippi River, the list goes on.
As Susan David said, “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.” [2] The fact that there is the risk of something going wrong—getting lost, losing a bag, missing a flight—is exactly the reason why we must travel, and if possible, travel alone. If it is too comfortable, we will learn nothing about ourselves.
So as I prepare to embark on this journey in a month, I remind myself: sometimes a physical, outer journey is necessary to complete an emotional, inner journey.
We can’t stay safe at home forever.
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Exactly one month from today, I will be arriving in London, sleepy from a long red-eye flight but brimming with the adrenaline rush of a new experience. From there, I will be traveling throughout Europe for two months, exploring Germany, Italy, and France.
I have traveled outside of the United States before, but this will be the first time that I am traveling alone. It will also be the first time that I have spent an extended period of time (longer than a week) outside of the United States.
This trip has been many months in the making, and as the date gets closer, my anxiety around the trip has started to build. It is not an unbearable anxiety, the type that inhibits you from taking action, but rather it is an eager anxiety, reminding me that this trip is really happening.
To calm my mind, I started reading The School of Life’s guide titled How To Travel, a collection of 30 essays on the various psychological and philosophical elements to consider while traveling. The very first essay provided me with an entirely new way of thinking about my trip; here’s an excerpt from the book:
“The destination we find ourselves drawn to reflects an underlying sense of what is currently missing or under-supported in our lives. We are seeking, through our travels, not just to see new places, but also to become fuller, more complete beings. The destination promises to correct imbalances in our psyches, for we are all inevitably a little lacking or excessive in one area or another. The place we go to should, ideally, help to teach us certain lessons that we know we need to hear. Our destinations are a guide to, and a goad for, who we are trying to become.”
When thinking of my trip through this lens, I started asking myself: why am I really going on this trip? What is currently missing from my life that I am trying to fill?
The reality is that I’ve spent the better portion of my 20s in a state of limbo. My early 20s were spent living at my parents’ house, commuting to and from the city every day for work. During that time, I desperately wanted to be able to live in the city. After two years of living at my parents’ house, I finally had the financial means to move to the city, but not too long after, COVID struck. During the on-again-off-again lockdowns, I—along with everyone else—was waiting for a certain level of freedom to be able to enjoy life again. Now that COVID (for the most part) has passed, I find myself in my mid-20s searching for the next phase—finding a significant other, moving into my own apartment, maybe buying a house, maybe moving to a new city.
And so when I think about what is missing from my life and how my travels reflect what is missing, I can’t help but feel like this trip in particular is my way of pushing myself into a new phase. It’s not until we remove ourselves from everything that is familiar—our routines, our friends, our family, our local coffee shops and supermarkets—that we find who we really are.
There is a quote from Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus that sums this up perfectly:
“Without cafés and newspapers, it would be difficult to travel. A paper printed in our own language, a place to rub shoulders with others in the evenings enable us to imitate the familiar gestures of the man we were at home, who, seen from a distance, seems so much a stranger. For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. One can no longer cheat — hide behind the hours spent at the office or at the plant (those hours we protest so loudly, which protect us so well from the pain of being alone). I have always wanted to write novels in which my heroes would say: “What would I do without the office?” or again: “My wife has died, but fortunately I have all these orders to fill for tomorrow.” Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn’t know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves. But also, soul-sick, we restore to every being and every object its miraculous value.” [1]
This line in particular—“For what gives value to travel is fear”—is the line that stands out to me the most. As with any great adventure, there must be something at risk. Frodo takes the ring to Mount Doom, Odysseus sets sail to fight in the Trojan War, Huckleberry Finn runs away down the Mississippi River, the list goes on.
As Susan David said, “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.” [2] The fact that there is the risk of something going wrong—getting lost, losing a bag, missing a flight—is exactly the reason why we must travel, and if possible, travel alone. If it is too comfortable, we will learn nothing about ourselves.
So as I prepare to embark on this journey in a month, I remind myself: sometimes a physical, outer journey is necessary to complete an emotional, inner journey.
We can’t stay safe at home forever.
