Finding Yourself in Travel

More than any other experience in my life, the act of traveling has had more impact on who I am today and who I hope to become in the future. Traveling has shaped the way I eat, where I live, who my friends are, my career, hobbies, politics and even my wife and I’s decision to not have children. But this wasn’t always the case, as for much of my life I had a very sheltered experience, living in a bubble away from the rest of the world. 

I grew up in a small town in the southeast and when I think back about that time, I never concerned myself much with “worldly” things. In my mind, the world consisted of my school, our local park where we played baseball and the wooded area behind my house that I explored during summer breaks.

The most “worldly” experience I had as a young millennial back then was probably as a gumshoe detective, watching Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. 

Occasionally we travelled outside of our area which usually consisted of a trip to Florida. It wasn’t until the summer before my eight grade year though, that our family ventured out beyond our comfort zone, visting New York City. I can’t know for sure, but my guess is we never would have traveled to NYC if it hadn’t been for my older sister and her desire to attend New York University (a very hip place to be in the 90’s).   

While a trip to NYC might not seem like much, seeing the big city lights, riding in a cab for the first time, eating authentic New York-style pizza, visiting the Met, catching a glimpse of a celebrity for the first time (none other than America’s national treasure, Nicholas Cage), encountering homeless people living on the street for the first time, and walking block-by-block for miles on end was all a little overwhelming for a thirteen year old kid who grew up in a town with a population less than any single building in NYC. 

Over the next few years we continued these visits to the big apple while my sister completed her college studies at NYU. This left an indelible mark on me as I slowly gained an appreciation and comfort for the city that never sleeps.

But beyond just seeing with my own two eyes the way that other people lived, I began to change as a person as I looked to incorporate many of these different experiences into my own life, from the type of apartment I chose to live after college to the food I ate. 

Reaching Adulthood as a Millennial is an Awful Excuse to Stop Traveling 

Travel slowed down for a few years after I graduated college and started working as getting ahead in my career and finding a relationship took center stage in my life. While my wife and I did manage to leave the country for our honeymoon in Jamaica, for the next few years the trips to New York City stopped after my sister moved back to the south and joined me in Nashville to raise her children with the support and help of our nearby parents.  

While my sister had moved back home, I was fortunately enough to find a new source of inspiration to help me take my next leap forward in my travels – my wife, who was born in another country and loved to travel!

The idea of visiting different continents is a rather small undertaking when comparing that to uprooting your family and moving halfway around the world where you don’t speak the language. And for my wife, her dream had always been to visit Italy so shortly after we were married, we took the long flight over the Atlantic for the first time ever, visiting the cities of Rome, Florence and Venice. 

Seeing and experiencing Italy for the first time was similar to that same eye-opening, culture-shock moment that I first experienced as an adolecent back in 1994 in New York City. Between the food and wine, the buzz of the city plazas, the art and architecture, walking through cobble-stone streets with no cars, the awe-inspiring, giant cathedrals and the leisurely, relaxed pace of life unfamiliar to me, the transformative power of travel once again took a hold over me. 

Fast forward eight years, we have now been back to Europe several times and we’re starting to add other new continents and countries to our completed bucket list. But more importantly than just visiting places we’ve never been, we have become different people because of our travel experiences.  

Our travels have helped expand our palette and gain a deep appreciation for food, now cooking a variety of recipes from around the world, six nights a week, in our efforts to recreate a meal we once had on our travels. We take daily walks around the park next to our home and on our weekends, rather than getting in our car, we’ll walk multiple miles to reach our next destination.

We even changed our careers to give us more flexibility and control over our time to allow for more travel. We’re more deliberate in our efforts to connect with others as we look to build closer bonds with our friends and families, creating a tight sense of community often felt when visiting other countries. And our political views have drastically been altered by the different perspectives and cultures found in different parts of the world. 

Travel Now and Travel Often 

“If you’re 22, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.” – Anthony Bourdain 

When you travel, something inside of you changes. As a millennial, if you aspire to be a well-rounded, interesting, intelligent and evolved person, you owe it to yourself to travel as much as humanly possible, especially when you are young and able to do so.

Whatever you think of other places, those are just thoughts until you actually visit those places yourself. With the world at our fingertips (literally) on our phones, it’s easy to see the world as a very scary place, filled with terror, disease and economic ruin.

But even in the darkest places of our planet, people by and large are inherently good – and they have so much to teach us that will help all of us grow as people. 

For the millennials out there, there has never been a better time to travel in the history of mankind. For the majority of the countries in the world, no major conflicts and wars are taking place that might keep away visitors from abroad.

Growing up in the internet age, there is more information available to us than ever to help us navigate foreign lands and even to help break down the language barriers with the assistance of technology.

Transportation options are plentiful as we are all just 1-3 flights away from entering virtually every country in the world from anywhere, all within a day’s journey. And the world’s economy is more connected than ever, both financially and through technology, enabling millions of people to work while away from their home country. 

An Opportunity Abroad 

For my wife and I, while we very much still feel like amateur explorers only scratching the surface, travel has taken such a hold over for us that we now have active plans in place to eventually retire overseas. Our goal in moving to a new country someday isn’t to escape, rather it’s to seek out new experiences, a new way of life and to learn new things about ourselves that we don’t yet understand.

Travel will create that opportunity. 

Assuming we stay healthy and the world doesn’t fall into another world war, we will absolutely make that plan happen. Because it’s just not that big of a deal – people move to other countries all of the time.

Ten years ago I never would have entertained a crazy idea like this, but the more I travel and experience the world, the less scary this idea becomes.

To my wife and I, there simply is no alternative as the scary thing for us would be to stay put and live out our existence in a bubble, depriving ourselves of exploration and self-discovery. Instead we plan to travel like our lives depend on it, because in the grand scheme of our existence, it truly does.