Much of our cultural mythology around travel comes from a time when travel was fundamentally different than it is today.
Since the 60’s, the international adventures of young people have become more and more seen as a right of passage and an opportunity for personal growth. That idea of travel comes from a time when leaving home really meant leaving home.
Over time our ability to use tools to connect with home while traveling has evolved from letters to expensive long-distance calls to email to shoddy Skype on paid wifi to iMessage, Facetime, and 24/7 connectivity.
As a backpacker, you can find cheap sim cards with data plans in almost every country on earth. Whether you’re in Mexico or Myanmar, you can get a sim card and continue chats with friends minutes after arriving.
This level of connectedness changes what it means to travel.
In the past, much of the most valuable personal growth opportunities of travel came from the separation travel created between you and your life at home. Being abroad meant that you would go long time spans without talking with your friends and family.
You were forced into a type of independence and autonomy. In almost all cases, travel pushed you out of your comfort zone, into loneliness, and helped you gain a new level of confidence by navigating challenges like making new friends, communicating in a language you don’t speak, and navigating new cities.
It also meant giving yourself the space of a couple months to thinking and evolve into a new version of yourself separate from the pressures of your friends and parents.
Up to this point, this post probably seems like a longing for the past, so I want to make clear that it isn’t.
Technology has made travel and, more importantly, life in a general, way better. I love being able to stay in Airbnbs, ride in Ubers, translate languages on the go, and find restaurants with reviews on Google Maps. Connectivity has made my life of remote work and travel possible and opened up opportunities for people all over the world to learn to skills and make more money. I would never want to go back to what we had before. But, that technology should force us to rethink what it means to travel.
Our mythology of travel—the stories we tell and things we seek from long-term trips—come from an activity that is fundamentally different than it is today.
Travel to new parts of the world remains an exciting and fulfilling activity, but it is no longer the shortcut to mental independence that it used to be. In the past leaving home physically meant leaving home mentally. It gave you mental space to disconnect and evolve. Now with your 3G or LTE connection, home is never more than a button away. That means the independence that used to be built into travel will only happen now by consistent conscious effort.
It also means that many people who go backpacking Europe or South America or wherever else and spend their time collecting photos for social media and talking with friends on iMessage aren’t experiencing the same thing as people who made the same physical journey a decade earlier.
Leave a Reply