Why Do People Travel? 7 Ways the World Will Change Your Perspective

Life is a series of choices, and a lot of the time, we make those choices blindly.

Think of the last time you spent an hour scrolling aimlessly down your Facebook feed. Did you plan to do that, or did it just sort of happen? How many times have you said “I’d love to, but I don’t have the time” – and then found yourself watching something utterly terrible on TV, or spent hours playing a lackluster game on your Mac, PS4 or phone?

Travel forces you to make these choices consciously. Every dollar is given a role. Every spare minute can be spent on experiences that will stay in your mind forever. The tiny frustrations of modern life shrink in importance until you just can’t believe that stuff used to annoy you. Your awareness of everything is heightened—and that includes that voice deep inside you that’s saying what you really want out of life.

If you want to see your everyday choices in a different light, try this: Instead of saying “I don’t have the time,” say “it’s not a priority for me”—and reflect on it.

Travel also teaches you the true value of material possessions, aka. “Stuff”.

When you have to carry every single item you own, you quickly learn what stuff you can do without. We all need very little to survive (starting with food, water, shelter, and a way to sustain all three) and beyond that, a lot of modern possessions are non-essential and therefore disposable.

It’s also a fact that at least half of the things we pack when we travel can be found at our destination, sometimes a lot cheaper than at home.

I now take a much simpler approach to the way I pack my bags. If your life feels cluttered with stuff, use this post at Zen Habits to take an inventory of your possessions, and try letting go of the things you don’t really want or need.

Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.” —Richard E. Byrd

The most extreme news travels the furthest. You never hear about the 99.9% of people having a normal day – you hear about the 0.1% who definitely aren’t.

When was the last time you clicked on a news story that said, “Today absolutely nothing frightening or dangerous happened?”

Bad, scary news gets the most clicks. News that generates outrage is the most popular on social media. The news seduces us into feeling pessimistic and helpless because that’s what generates the most reaction in audiences—and that’s ruining our ability to see what the rest of the world is really like.

If you only learned about other countries from the news, you’d think the world was a horrible place. —Gary Arndt

In fact, the world is a mixture of excitingly new and reassuringly ordinary. You’ll love it.

By default, foreign people are good, in the sense that you are good.

Almost everyone you will meet on your travels is concerned with the same things you are—how to keep themselves and their families clothed, fed and safe while building a happy, fulfilling life for themselves along the way.

They don’t want to make enemies—they want new friends. They don’t want your fear or anger—they want your respect. They’ll also be intensely curious about what you’re doing, and will want to hear all your stories (right after you ask them about theirs because that’s what adventurous, open-minded travelers do.)

Yes, we’re different, but we’re also very much the same. There is no separation. We’re all in this together.

If you’re from the United States, it’s easy to think your part of the continent is the biggest on earth. Maybe you’ve taken a road-trip from coast to coast, from D.C. to San Francisco, and it blew your mind that it took five days of driving eight hours a day.

Just wait until you set foot in Africa, which is bigger than the States, India, China and most of Europe combined.

The world is bigger than your brain can handle, and you won’t believe it until you’ve seen it for yourself. It’s also filled with more multicultural complexity than you’ve ever handled at home – and that is scientifically proven to be awesome for your brain.

You’ll feel it the first time a stranger takes you into his or her home and treats you like family. (This lady, motorcycling solo across Iran, felt it every time she stopped.)

You feel it when you realize nobody’s speaking English.

You’ll feel it when you realize the people you meet are doing absolutely fine without anyone else’s help, and when they’re doing something quicker and more efficiently than you ever learned at home.

You feel it when you have no idea what to do next, and there’s no shortage of complete strangers willing to help.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. —Gustave Flaubert

Unconsciously or not, we all go out into the world with a set of prejudices about what we’re going to see—and the world replaces them with empathy, humbleness, and the realization of how little we really know.

Travel is a free education in the way the real world works – but it also teaches you how to see things differently.

It’s not naive to see the best in people before they confirm it for you. It’s not impractical to want to see the greatest sights on earth or take part in its most exciting experiences. It’s not crazy to see uncertainty and change as more attractive than comfort and stability (in fact, change is one of the greatest benefits travel can bestow, because, without change, nothing grows).

Travel is about wanting to see everything better, and then going and doing something about it.