"Traveling is like flirting with life." - Lisa St. Aubin de Teran #MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/jETMmQ2gpr
— SmarterTravel (@SmarterTravel) September 21, 2015
One of the things I loved about this article on the benefits of travel is how much it mirrors my own experience. Like the author, I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the experiences I’ve had living, working, and traveling overseas. Not only did being outside the borders of my homeland force me outside myself and my own narrow boundaries, it forced me to see the world from a different perspective, one that too many Americans either never get or never take the opportunity to experience learn from.
I learned right away that…SURPRISE!!!…the rest of the world doesn’t revolve around America or Americans. Outside our own borders, we’re in most cases just another foreigner, no better, worse or different than anyone else. Americans tend to stand out in a foreign country as if we were wearing blaze orange during deer hunting season, but we’re not recognized as special because of that. My inability to blend in aside, I found the experience of being a foreigner in a foreign land to be fascinating and exhilarating…and yes, occasionally a bit stressful (living and working in a war zone and having to deal with things like snipers and mine fields will do that). I love finding myself in a place where speaking only English places one at a distinct disadvantage and then figuring out how to make my way.
The author, Sydney Alonso, did a very good job of detailing how travel can make one a better and more well-rounded person. Her list of ways that we can benefit from traveling mirrors- almost word for word- what I would have said. Traveling can teach us many things, including
- How to appreciate and learn from another culture
- Patience
- The importance of unplugging from social media
- How to live in the moment
- We are not so different
- The world isn’t as scary as you’ve been lead to believe
- You’re a lot more capable than you ever thought you could be
- There’s no place like home
- Day to day problems aren’t really “problems”
- Stay humble
Traveling internationally can indeed be humbling. I found it interesting learning how others outside the U.S. saw my home country…and, again unsurprisingly, it turns out that America isn’t universally loved. I learned that sometimes it’s better to be human first who happens to be American than the reverse. More than anything, I love being forced out of my comfort zone- whether it’s driving on the “wrong” side of the road, trying to decipher road signs written in Cyrillic script, or trying to order off a menu you can’t read. Sometimes you just have to go for it and live with the results.
Erin and I just returned from traveling in Iceland and Norway for two weeks, and it was good to leave my hermetically-sealed bubble and experience life on the outside again. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about things like snipers and minefields, and I had Erin all to myself. Win-win, eh?
Though I’m generally pretty good with languages, I’ll freely admit to being baffled by Icelandic, and I had about as much luck with the street signs, but I think I managed the rest of it just with a minimum of disruption and difficulty. Fortunately, English is almost a universal language in Iceland, so it was very easy to get by. Perhaps our next trip will be to somewhere that’s not necessarily the case.
I can’t wait.
