Walking beneath ancient arches build by other cultures, exploring the ruins of a city holding up the structure of the modern, or simply enjoying a beach – all of these things sound like an adventure and a time well spent. Many more young people explore the options to travel abroad, spend a semester or two in a foreign country, or just use their summer vacation to work and travel. It sounds exciting, it sounds as if your life changes, but it simply does not without your willingness to change.
I have been traveling – somewhat. To be fair, I am a homebody no matter where I am. I could be in the Amazon Rainforest and truly enjoy the atmosphere and take the most amazing photos, but at the end of the day I want to cuddle up in my bed and at least have the option of using Wi-Fi (My dream is that one day Wi-Fi will be everywhere around the world for free). During my travels, I noticed many things that we don’t talk about when we dream about traveling the world.
You Will Feel Alone
Your stomach is filled with excitement and if you could, you would do a backflip. Regarding your own safety and that of your environment, you choose not to. Moving a new place because of college, work, or other reasons, you will always feel lonely in the beginning. Now you have to try your hardest to make connections because we all need the support and love from our friends.
While most of us have moved to new cities (no worries if you don’t; you have your own life path that can’t be compared with anyone else), it changes completely when you are in a new country that has a different native language than your own (even moving from similar places like German to Austria or UK to USA), it changes completely. If you believe this or not, being from another country sets you apart from others and you might notice it. They might change their behavior toward you based on some stereotypes they have (once they hear your accent). That can be annoying, frustrating and just plain awful. Depending on where you are, you can stick out like a sore thumb. You need to consider that people might want to take advantage of you or assume you’re an easy target. I am not saying it’s going to be awful. It is going to be a wonderful experience all-together, but this is one shadow side of traveling. Personally, nothing too bad has happened to me in my time abroad; it sometimes can get a little bit frustrating when the nth person wants to talk about how great Germany is and you must miss it (I know, first world problem). Still, one ought to be careful and also be aware that homesickness is a real sucker punch and has also a mean tongue.
Bring your favorite plushy along. I guarantee you, you need it (I accidentally left my fluffers at a friend’s house; my mom gave me her 2 oldest teddy bears and oh boy do I miss them).
Untethered-ness
Finding ones place of belonging can be a hard undertaking; especially if you are prone to travel a lot and make different friends along the way. You might find friends of your lifetime; those you hold dearest to your heart. One would think that everyone is around the people they love and trust with their whole heart, but as a traveler, you will have people all over the world. You might feel you belong when you visit them, but you are always one foot out the door. It feels that you are always on the pulse of time and experience new exciting things, but sometimes speeding down a lane can cause one to feel without a connection to earth; untethered.
Not being around your friends while they go through big changes might feel overwhelming to you. It is okay. As much as you would love to be there for your friends, your friends love you as no matter what and understand you. There is always skype, facetime or other cool ways to stay in contact. It’s not easy, but worth it.
Why Do It?
If it so hard and not a walk in the doggy park filled with cute little puppers why would we then do it? I don’t think this path is for everyone and not everyone would love to settle down and get kids. There is no right or wrong in how you want to live your life. People who truly love you will support you; even if the decisions you make, sometimes hurts them in passive ways (not being there for their birthday, not celebrating good news with them, etc).
For some people, traveling the world means the world to them and they might never settle down. And that is okay. Just be aware that everything seemingly perfect, always comes with some parts you don’t always like. It’s the admission and acceptance of anything we consider negative.
The truth is: sometimes the hardest things for us to do, are the ones we want the most and will cost us more than we’d like to admit if we should fail.
There are no guarantees. No one knows if life is going to be okay if you choose to settle down and have a family and vice versa.
There is not a guideline to live; a how to. You do truly only live once; and while I do encourage you to take some risks, please don’t jump down a cliff and yell YOLO or I will personally hunt you down if you haven’t died from the jump yet.
