Some people go on trips to find themselves. Some people choose to leave their comfortable place of residence and venture out to see what the world has in store for them. My generation is not the first one to pursue a life abroad.
I started my six weeks backpacking trip in Europe about three weeks ago. Which means, I'm writing this at 3:30 a.m. in Prague from a hostel while I wait to board a train to Budapest.
I've been on two backpacking trips before. One I went to Madrid, Paris, Berlin, and Cologne with my best friend brother. The second trip I visited Greece, Israel, and Pisa. Both of these trips changed my life in ways I don't think I'll be able to fully express. They initiated an unmooring. Whatever sense of permanence I created for myself at home slowly dissipated as I came to realize the world was out my front door.
Now I still call Dallas my home and I look forward to returning from this six week trip. My sense of self might have changed but I'm strongly rooted in my sense of identity. I mean, I've spent countless hours exploring "who I am" and pondering other existential questions. I'm not quite through, but I feel that I know who I am and what I want from this world.
Some people go on trips to find themselves. I already know who I am. So why did I go on this trip? What is there to learn about myself?
The world is at your fingertips.
- I don't mean the internet. Simply that he world is out there and parts of it are accessible. The wonders of the world aren't meant to be enjoyed in the pages of coffee table books. I know, I used to marvel at those pages.
Who I am now is significantly different and particularly similar to who I was in the past.
- It's a cop out. The answer is too vague. I've been working to delineate the exact changes and I can graph them out for you or make some bad illustration. That's not the point. That's a post for later.
The point (and I have one here) is no matter how developed or underdeveloped your sense of self is travel helps. Travel outside of your city, zip code, state, country, continent. It pushes you in ways you didn't expect and will make you grasp at truths you didn't before. You will come to accept a reality that's different from the one before as sunrise is different from sunset. Life changes. Travelling can help you make sense of it. (Provided you aren't running away from change.)
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