Every morning for my whole week in Chamonix, France I would stand at the kitchen bar waiting for my tea to cool off and contemplate my hostel’s welcome sign.

Bienvenu/Welcome to Chamonix Lodge!

Wifi Password: eatsleepshred

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

This quote was scrawled underneath the Hostel information in messy white chalk, not an afterthought but something that someone felt was important enough to squeeze into the tiny space left on the board. Every day I would think about what it meant, what modesty had to do with traveling and why it was so desirable in the first place. Then my interesting new hostel friends would wake up and I would shove my thoughts to the back of my brain and go eat, chat and ski. Later, after having time to process my week of exciting new solo travel, I began to see more clearly what the quote ment.

When you’re at home, in your usual comfortable place, you tend to get desensitized to all the great things around you; the scenery, the people, the history, it’s all just ordinary and therefore not worth putting energy into experiencing. But, traveling puts distance between you and your usual life, allowing you to see what you were blind to before. Sometimes, with enough distance and change, it is hard to not start noticing and appreciating the ordinary things that you would usually just pass by. The beauty of a simple drive. The pleasure of a spontaneous conversation which turns strangers into friends. The intrigue of finding new corners of an unexplored place. You quickly realize how FULL the world is, and how many things you have missed out on just by becoming used to them. Likewise, when you settle into one lifestyle or one set of hobbies you can close yourself off to heaps of new experiences that you might like just as much. Not all the experiences you have while traveling will stick with you, but some can reintroduce you to parts of yourself you had forgotten about. Traveling has already forced me to learn these lessons multiple times.

The first time was when I went to college. I had lived in the same house for my entire life. I had driven down the same road to school for 13 years. I had done the same activities with the same people in the same places for so long that they no longer registered in my mind as something to pay attention to. Leaving home made me realize, as it does for many people, how special home really was and how much I had underappreciated my life. I was still safely in my narrow vision of the world but at least I was beginning to appreciate the ordinary things I had left behind.

Then, going to London for a semester placed me into a life unlike anything I had ever lived before. I was in a far away city, without my network of friends and family, without my usual schedule and job, without even my own dorm room. I had nothing except facetime and memories to connect me with my life at home. Although I was living with students and professors from my own school and although I was taking the same kind of classes I normally would, the lack of a comfortable setting made me begin to look at everything around my more closely. Even after just one month, I realized how limited my life at school could sometimes be. I was so happy in with my current social sphere and lifestyle choices that I wasn't even trying to experience anything else. Having left, I have a newfound interest in opportunities at home that I had always overlooked. I see new communities to become acquainted with, new extracurriculars to try, even simple things like new restaurants and day trips. At home or at school, I tend to think of my way of life as pretty good and successful, but having all my support systems striped away made me realize how ignorant and naive that way of thinking really is. Even if I am happy there is whole world of experiences on my doorstep that will make my life richer.

Lastly and most dramatically so far, my trip to Chamonix catapulted me into the world outside of my narrow slice of life. I was inundated with new experiences. From the pride I felt at flying completely alone for the first time, to the wonder at seeing new places, to joy of meeting people who lived across the world from me but shared my interests, I was in constant state of bewilderment at everything I had been missing out on. Over the course of five days I began to even more strongly reject my love of predictability and comfort. I rekindled my desire to challenge myself in the outdoors and remembered my love of meeting new people. Returning to London (which is starting more and more to feel like a home) I am trying to remember to constantly treat it like a new adventure. I will never experience everything the world has to offer and as soon as I act like I have, I will stop learning and growing as a person. I realized in Chamonix how damning it is to settle so deeply into a comfortable life that you have no desire to do anything else. If discomfort and unpredictability make for a full life then I will gladly try not to avoid those things. As my irish bus driver said on the way home, “You cant have an interesting adventure if everything goes right”.

Travel does many things for an individual, but I think whoever was picking quotes for my hostel’s welcome board was on the right track: the most valuable thing I will take home with me so far is a greater sense of modesty. The dictionary defines modesty as the “the quality or state of being unassuming in the estimation of one's abilities.” When I think of everything I’ve experienced so far, I would agree. But I would also argue that there is a deeper layer to consider. The most difficult thing I have encountered is having to accept that I might not know as much about my own self as I thought. Many of my best experiences abroad in London and Chamonix have challenged the way I view myself. I can see a little more clearly now that I do not understand my reactions to different situations, my likes and dislikes, my skills and what I need to work on as clearly as I had previously assumed. I hold great pride in being a self actualized individual but I am slowly learning that believing that you have everything figured out is as crippleing as not knowing anything at all.

In the same way that travel forces you to see ordinary truths in the physical world around you, it also strips away the preconceived notions you have about yourself. It teaches you to constantly question where you are in life both in your outward actions and your inward state of being. Since beginning my travels, I am becoming more and more aware of how little I know, and I am learning to love the constant growth you can experience by being humbly open to new experiences.