Comments so far are missing a major reason travel is likely enjoyable. One of my favorite theories on why time feels like it accelerates as you get older is that your brain tends to only store unique memories. Like that daily commute you do every day and the odd feeling you sometimes get at the end of it where you can’t remember driving…
Travel is a set of unique experiences that form unique memories. Part of what’s addicting and pleasurable is that it helps slow down the perception of the passage of time, among many other positives.
It’s also self reinforcing in that when you think back, you tend to disproportionately remember travel vs other experiences.
There’s clearly a lot more benefits than that, but it certainly seems like a significant factor.
That unique experience is hard to find, though, especially as one gets older, I find. Once you've been to a handful of cities, you've kind of seen them all. If you live near a major city it's even worse because chances are you've seen most of what it has to offer, and if you visit another city somewhere else in the world it's like "Oh, yeah... more museums... more theme parks... more bars and clubs... another beach... some skyscrapers... street food... people who don't speak my language... I should have stayed home." I know it's not like that for everyone, but that's essentially why I don't always like traveling and why it annoys me when people tell me I should get out more and travel.
When I travel, either I want people or I want solitude. Most of my enjoyment from traveling comes from seeing family and friends, and it really doesn't matter that much where we're situated. But if I have neither, then being in a sea of people is really worse than just being at home. In that case, I want to be alone, and I can easily get that by driving 1.5 hours into the mountains where I live.
Travel isn't a bad thing, in fact it can be a great thing. My problem is that we've made travel out to be a grandiose life achievement. In the near past and for millennia, humans spent most if not their entire lives in one place, and there's nothing wrong with that.
As an avid traveler, I disagree with your assessment. Yes, there are definitely things that are very similar in all places, particularly as western companies take over the world (much to my disappointment).
However, if you get away from the "tourist" spots, every place is unique and does offer something interesting to experience.
My wife and I were driving back to our rental in France from someplace and stopped for lunch at the only restaurant we could find in the little town in the middle of I have no idea where we were. Very little English spoken (we don't speak French, but can manage with a few words and technology) and had a very enjoyable meal and a little sightseeing in this small town.
Not saying that everyone enjoys that kind of thing, but if someone travels to Paris, for example, and has their sights only set on the popular things, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, etc. They're missing so much more to the city. Yes, certainly plan on seeing what's popular because that's why you went there, but also spend at least half the time exploring the little gems that every city offers that unique to it.
And for the love of everything, don't eat at places you can eat at home every meal just because you know it.
I'd agree - once I get outside of a major US city, and get into Tier II and Tier III cities, and then into rural america with its small towns, I find a whole wealth of experiences that I just.. cant get otherwise.
Sometimes they're vibrant little untouched spots on the map - sometimes they're little dried up outposts of humanity, with some grand buildings left as testament that people once believed this place would prosper, and that there was money here at some point.
It's something I've always wondered at - you go out to rural america, there are a ton of small towns with really grand buildings in them, clear evidence that there was capital there at one point - and now its all gone - where and why did it go? The when is obvious usually, the other two, not as much. Thats an aside however.
I'll defend eating at the familiar when tired or worn out, but I do suggest trying the local color, you never know what you'll find out there - it might be good or bad, but it will almost certainly be memorable.
I'm not against eating at familiar places for the exact reason you give. Even to experience how a McDonald's, for example, makes cultural adjustments to their menu (ie Beer on the menu).
Of course, there was that time after a long drive, we stopped at KFC in France because my wife loves their mashed potatoes. KFC in France does not have mashed potatoes and I ate undercooked chicken which kept me in bed for almost a week (we were there for 5 weeks, so luckily were able to absorb that downtime).
Yes, I think so anyhow, a significant portion of rural america, particularly in the south is racially diverse - either with a significant minority population, or majority minority.
In the South, its (depending on where) Black folks, in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, its Hispanic.
The fact that I see mexican/hispanic restaurants and groceries, in rural america (even in the south) tells me the world is changing.
Which, again, is another reason why I'm not exactly thrilled by most travel. So much of the world is evolving into a hodgepodge of various cultures. There's nothing wrong with this, of course. It's just that it's going to mean that, for me, going to experience cultures that already exist in my backyard really doesn't add much to my life. And maybe that's from my particular standpoint of living in Southern California, where we've got a little bit of Mexico, a little bit of Asia, a little bit of African American culture, a little Armenian... I'm sure I'm missing a few. And of course we've got our share of farmland and the ethnicity that are stereotypical with that.
So if rural America is gradually becoming that way, and thereby the rest of the world following suit, I guess the reason to travel would be to experience different cultures before they effectively come to us all (or disappear all together in some cases). But that's really more curiosity than anything else, like visiting a traveling museum exhibit that has a limited run.
If you're not actively in a sundown town, it's perfectly fine and safe to visit regardless of your ethnicity. The experience is often eye opening.
Imo there should be a cultural exchange program where you students in cities and send them to rural schools for a semester and vice versa via exchanges. It's important to the American experience to be able to understand both worlds if we are going to continue to coexist in a union.
I've long felt the same - the military used to be this, used to do this - its part of why we had such an era of tranquility politically post WWII - you had a large number people with a shared experience who came back from war, and who were willing to work together.
I've long believed in some form of mandatory national service, just to encourage this - it would also decrease the risk for military adventurism if the military was a broader cross-section of society.
There used to be something like that, and I'm not sure whether it still exists. My father's family housed an exchange student, a Black girl from another part of America, and later a girl from Norway (I think). Of course this wasn't specific to cultural exchange within America in particular, but it wasn't to the exclusion of American students.
However, I must admit I may be wrong in my interpretation of this, and now I want to ask my dad again next time I see him.
The way I interpreted their post was that yes, there are differences, but are they really that different when one takes a step back? The answer to that is going to be a deeply personal one, which is why I agree w/ both of you although my personal mentality is closer to the one they cite.
As an example, one thing I do enjoy is finding and visiting quirky little museums. The sort that might only be a couple of rooms worth of items. By nature each one is a new experience for me. But if I take a more abstract view I could say "I'm just looking at another quirky little museum".
Yes this is also my 'experience'. In my younger days I spend years backpacking on a budget with only a rough outline of where to go.
To me traveling isn't about visiting different places. It is about opening up to the unexpected. Something we don't do so easily when following an itinerary.
A bit hyperbolic, perhaps intentional, but I agree. It's compounded by the fact that I'm just not cut out for true adventure travel. Sorry, I need some modern conveniences. The result has been that over the years my travel preferences have become decidedly more milquetoast.
I think I might have somewhat similar requirements. I need a nice hotel room. Camping, tracking etc are completely off the table. I've never found that to restrict where I could visit. It does make everything more expensive though.
Be very careful, because hotels are where the tourists are, and the places where where the tourists are are the places with a repetitive international “tourist” vibe. If you only have a short time to travel then hotels are OK.
I originally learnt this while “backpacking”: backpackers travel options and staying in accomodation intended for backpackers leads to a kind of internationalised backpacking culture experience that is completely disconnected from the culture you are visiting. Many backpackers had time, but used it poorly: budget constraints ekeing out their money for a longer time with lower benefit.
Even travelling in my own country, the early AirBnB experience was meeting people from other paths in life than my own, which is wonderful if you have the ability to share.
My current style of travelling is more on the edges, disconnected from backpacker style travelling and from hotel travelling, and spending my time more randomly. Planning trips generally draws you towards tourism experiences, because the information directed at you will lead you down the path of least resistance.
Yep. If one wants to pay enough money you can get glamor versions of just about anything. Ignoring for the moment that I'm often not willing to "pay enough money" a big part of it for me is that it starts to homogenize the experience back towards that mean we're discussing. It loses some of the unique character.
Put another way, some of my travel fantasies are pretty out there, I just know I'll never do them. Even if I had the cash and was willing to spend it, at that point the experience would never match the fantasy.
Hah, yes, I get hyperbolic. But I did not mean to say that one shouldn't want or enjoy modern conveniences on their travels. When I travel, I always like to make sure my lodging is nearby a convenience store like 7-Eleven. If there's a 7-Eleven, I'm there! lol It's not always possible, but in no way am I saying that the only real travel experience is staying in a grass hut in the heart of Africa.
Bad phrasing on my part. I was referring to the part about cities all being more or less the same. I 100% agree and share the takeaway sentiment. What I was referring to with my hyperbolic comment was more an attempt to head off people thinking "Well, but that's not true! Paris has the Eiffel Tower and London has Big Ben!". Yes, they're not exactly the same but still it does get a bit blah over time.
Yeah, and that's the thing; I have nothing against visiting landmarks, but they blend together after a while and there are only so many of them.
I think the vividness of modern media also ruins things like the Eiffel Tower. It's one thing to see a photograph and aspire to one day visit Paris, but I'm pretty sure I've absorbed views of the Eiffel Tower from just about every angle in UHD drone and helicopter footage. In another era, I might be tempted to repeatedly visit it in my lifetime. As far as my brain can tell in this era, I've not only been to the Eiffel Tower but I've been higher than it. So biiiig deal.
What you are saying rings more true to me for domestic travel. Do you have this experience (or lack of it) for international travel as well? Even for countries that are more different from the one you live in?
> In the near past and for millennia, humans spent most if not their entire lives in one place, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I don't think that's true, maybe just leisure travel is cheaper in the last hundred years so its more common. There was movement to the americas, westward expansion in the us. Europe immigration movements. large wars. pilgrimages
Staying in a single location became possible for humanity only with the advent of agriculture.
Before domestication, they had to follow the game animals around on their migrations, travel to find the edible plants and fruits, etc.
Even once horse, goats, and cattle were domesticated for their meat, milk, and fur (note this is separate from agricultural cultivation), humans had to roam in really large areas, from winter grazing grounds to summer grazing grounds as still well as following the game animals around.
I think traveling is a very ingrained behavior in humanity.
> In the near past and for millennia, humans spent most if not their entire lives in one place, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Same can be said about slaves. What conclusion should I draw? Honestly, I think you should get off of Instagram if you think travel is about life achievement. If getting to know your fellow humans and expanding your understanding of why the world is the way it is is not interesting to you, stay home. But also don't be surprised if people call you a troglodyte. I agree with everything you said about the problems of modern day traveling, that it is incredibly geared towards empty experiences. However, I believe this is because people only have a few days to travel. What irks me is seeing "43 countries visited!" because, as you allude to, it is a vanity number. It takes months to fully immerse oneself in a culture or even be invited into local life. However, that's obviously out of reach for 99.99% of the population and so we have the current set of cookie cutter experiences. Of course, none of what I suggest is easy. I also classify myself as an introvert, which you don't say explicitly but is abundantly clear you are as well. Just make a new friend in the country you want to go to, just one. The emotional energy it takes upfront is paid tenfold in the experiences that come after. Oftentimes, you will discover that traveling with said friend brings them tons of joy because it gives them a reason to go do all the things in their backyard that they have never done because it is in their backyard.
> Same can be said about slaves. What conclusion should I draw?
Well damn, I guess breathing is in question since slaves can breath. /s
Honestly, I'm not sure the point you're trying to make with this.
> [Modern travel is] incredibly geared towards empty experiences. However, I believe this is because people only have a few days to travel. What irks me is seeing "43 countries visited!" because, as you allude to, it is a vanity number. It takes months to fully immerse oneself in a culture or even be invited into local life.
Maybe that's true, perhaps for many. To an extent I think it also is caused by a homogenization of global culture. In my case, it's that and the fact that once you've seen enough cities, enough forests, enough museums, enough shows, and eaten enough food... it all blends together and, after 30+ years of being on earth, as much as I cherish the existence of all of it, I don't necessarily find value in continually experiencing it all in order to cross them off the list of things to do. With the way so many of us are broadcasting our lives, we create this FOMO around travel that creates an illusion that we haven't truly lived unless we've been to all the major cities and historical ruins.
But yes, it's hard to live in the moment when you know you only have a handful of days to do what you want to do before you need to be back in the office, and the clock is ticking. Someone the other day was talking about the effect that meetings have on one's workday where, if the meeting is timed in the morning, you're less likely to get anything done before that meeting because the mind is anticipating having to switch gears for the meeting. If travel can only be done in a few days, the mind has to handle anticipating the travel and anticipating having to go back to work.
My point about slavery is that "humans have done this for a long time" is not an argument for anything. At best, we stay stuck in the past.
I think we are all saying the same thing. That, at some point, all humans get tired of the repetition. My main counter to all of this is that travel grants you an opportunity to experience things through a lens unachievable from your home. It does not matter how big your city's Chinatown (or choose your favorite ethnic center) is, it is merely a glimpse into that world. To me, travel is an incredibly long process of experiencing your life as it could have been. Almost like experiencing reincarnation while you are still alive. Obviously, your body is still the same but you go through many of the same stages of childhood when learning a new language. Frustration that no one can understand you, immense gratification of finally being able to convey your ideas, etc. In this sense,
> FOMO around travel that creates an illusion that we haven't truly lived unless we've been to all the major cities and historical ruins.
Is entirely wrong and you should just simply choose to not play. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Stop being a sheep and following the herd. Pave your own path. If you so happen to end up in one of these places, great. At the end of the day, traveling somewhere new is an amazing opportunity to grow as an individual and expand your mind.
I did not say it was a requirement but you must concede that cultural understanding is greatly expedited by actual experience. The best I can do to summarize my thoughts is this. If you can replace the verb travel with the verb go, you are missing the whole point. The point of traveling is not to go to museums in a different place. This correctly encompasses the feeling that business "travel" is not "traveling". No one cares for doing the same thing in merely a different physical location. Things get confusing when people use the word travel as a means of experiencing something new. For instance, "we traveled to Costa Rica and went ziplining. It was fun." The part about Costa Rica is irrelevant to the experience. While these uses of the word travel are grammatically correct, it lacks, in my opinion, what many proponents of travel mean as there is no single word that encompasses the emotion in English. It is a great shame that exchange students and spring breakers get clumped into the same bucket as the two could not be further apart in terms of motive and outcome. At the end of the day, traveling is a deeply personal experience and there is nothing wrong with these other forms of travel (Mexico has great beaches!) but if one finds traveling to be empty, stop treating travel as a commodity that one gains. I end with a quote from Good Will Hunting:
> So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.
This is a more specific instance of something more general: new things are more exciting in the short term.
Someone else commented below about the hedonic treadmill.
Travel is what creates unique experiences in people because traveling is a rare thing for people in general.
When I toured we had 220-230 shows a year, everyday in a different place. I did it for 5 years.
It's hard now to even tell one year from the other.
I surely made great stories, but most of them are foggy nowadays.
Most unique experiences I have left of that time are either global events, I shared the merchandise stand with Nick Alexander the merch manager of EODM the night before he was brutally killed in the Bataclan attack, or too important to forget, like one of the crew members having a baby and rushing him to the airport so he could be there on time.
Anecdotally, I can say I have traveled for leisure (not work) every month or two for the last 5+ years, 90% of the time to a new place, and my experience aligns with @peoplefromibiza's perspective.
I think you have a point. But it sounds to me like your example was more similar to repetitive traveling for work than a unique travel experience each time. I don't know much about touring, but how different could've your daily routine really have been?
Touring is completely different from traveling for work, which I do too.
Touring is like traveling, it is in fact traveling at its best, it's like an adventure.
The only difference with traveling for leisure is that you don't stay in the same location for long, but you are away from home for a long time nonetheless.
Usually you travel around 200kms a day on average, someday it's 800km under the snow, some day it's 50kms on the coastline of beautiful Sardinia, but you might cross region borders or country borders, people speak different languages, you travel from north to south or west to east and everything changes.
East Germany and West Germany are different, German Switzerland and French Switzerland are different, Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels-area in Belgium are different.
North and South Italy are completely different.
To explain my point better I'll tell you what a musician told me.
One year we met with Bob Log III (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Log_III) a few times, because we were playing in the same venues, so we spent few nights together before and after the shows.
He told us he used to make a crazy number of shows in Europe, sth like 80 shows in 3 months.
He always travels alone, at least he did at the time, and drive his own car.
One night he was going from Innsbruck in Austria to Stockholm in Sweden where he had a show 48 hours later, stopping at the northern German border to get some sleep.
He told us it wasn't uncommon for him, he did it to pack as much shows as possible in as little time as possible, earn as much money possible, and then spend a couple of holiday weeks with his family in some European city, before going back home.
But then he said he stopped doing it.
He was only doing 30 shows in a row at max, no more than that.
Why, we asked.
He said: because as fun as it is to be always around partying with the great people that come at my shows who am I grateful to, because they are the ones allowing me to live my life as a musician, I started forgetting things.
I couldn't remember faces, dates, venues.
I kept going to the same places and not remembering people names.
So he decided to do less shows, max 30, in a bit less than two months, to make good memories that stayed.
What I wanna say is that it is absolutely non-boring, non-repetitive and definitely not something that feel like working, not at the level I did it anyway, but too much is too much, even too much fun can be too much and lose its meaning.
I kind of think what you said here actually proves my point. I didn't mean it's not adventurous or exciting, it's just that it becomes too familiar when you do it repetitively for the same reason under the same circumstances.
I've been doing occasional consulting work for the past 3 years for which I have to travel once or twice a month on most months. When I first started, every place I went to felt adventurous and unique. And now, if I'm traveling to someplace I've never visited even when I have to work on something I've never worked before, it just doesn't feel remotely unique or adventurous as it did before, especially in retrospect. I used to love talking to my friends what exciting things I've seen or people I've met, but now I don't think about it twice when I get home. My mind just kind of got used to it, it doesn't store it in the database with the unique or adventurous attributes set to true. Stuff just kind of goes in the "traveling for work" basket in the mind and gets all shuffled up, I've already forgot most names and faces of the people I've worked with as well and it hasn't even been that long. Sometimes I'll leave a meeting and 5 minutes later won't be able to remember someone's name.
But on the other hand, when I'm going somewhere and the circumstances have nothing to do with my work, even if I'm going somewhere I've already been before but the circumstances are different this time, both at that time and in retrospect it feels more unique and adventurous.
I think it's because when you do something repetitively, for the same reason and under similar circumstances, the associations in your mind kind of blend it all together.
I'm Italian, I toured regularly with an Italian band here and with some small-to-medium band from USA around Europe (the festival season in spring-summer is actually pretty great).
They were mainly from the so called "stoner" scene, such as Farflung, Fatso Jetson, Naam, White Hills etc.
I've moved a lot as an adult, and I can confirm that this is true. It's nothing to do with how old you are, and all to do with how much your life changes.
Last time I stayed in the same place/job for a few years it was a blur.
Really? When my kids were young (< 10, so a 12 year span), they were recognizably different cognitive functioning every month or so. Every month was a whole new game.
But yes, I do remember some of the early games, building block towers, as if they were yesterday.
Oh the kids themselves are different! But every day follows pretty much the exact same format, and if we try to mix it up they punish us harshly. (I kid but you get the idea).
We are soon, though I wish they could get vaxxed first (both under 5). Mostly it's just that every day is the same, and there's next to no spontaneity in life.
It's ok - we knew what we were signing up for before having kids, but deciding at 3 o'clock to spend the weekend camping is a lot less practical now. Even a quick outing requires a solid 30+ minutes of prep.
Its about how selfish one is. Sure we can cram our tiny kids into plane to Japan and do that trip we planned like there is no tomorrow. But if you know a bit about child's mind you know how stressful for them that whole experience would be.
It's all relative I suppose. It's a hell of a lot harder than it was! When I travel with adults I don't have to worry ahead of time about handling poop or bringing multiple changes of clothing or buying twice as many tickets or booking a room where it's OK if my kid is screaming for half the night because how do you get a wildly jetlagged 2 year old to sleep? They can't get vaccinated yet either so that's another source of stress too.
My experience is it is easier to go with the flow (with kids), so if the 2 year old can only adjust 1 hour of jetlag per day then you start with going to sleep at 4am and work your way down.
I was in Japan for a student exchange in 2016/17 and the amount of detail I remember from that time is astonishing. I can barely remember how I spent my day yesterday (in general I feel like I don't have a very good memory), but I can easily list all the trips we've taken during that semester and remember details that I would usually forget.
In general, I feel like most of my memories are structured around my unique (mostly travel-related) experiences. Oh 2015, that was the first time I ever left continental Europe and flew to Iceland in the middle of the semester to visit my friend. Things like that.
Unfortunately, travel has been turned into a commodity just like anything else. “Bragging rights” associated with travel have only become more desirable with the spread of social media, and other things that allow you to “travel” superficially- such as cruises.
> theories on why time feels like it accelerates as you get older
My theory is that everything takes a little longer as you get older, but in very small increments, so you don't really notice it. E.g., getting ready in the morning takes just a few seconds longer each day as you get old and slow down, but you remember it taking a set time, say 30 minutes. Then one day, you're up to 40 minutes, but it still feels like 30 to you. Aggregated across your myriad daily activities, and you're either getting the same amount of things done in a day, but your day is "shorter", or you're just running out of time altogether, because "where did the time go?" So, you perceive that time is moving faster, because you're getting less and less done in the same span.
I've noticed this some 14 years ago when doing mighty backpacking trip(s) in India. 2x 3 month trips, traveling all around that place with little plan and just return ticked, planning max few days in advance. Every day was so different.
It didn't feel like years after some time on the trip. More like I've switched whole reality, myself and everybody else. After some 2 months, life and reality back home was just a distant dream, too unreal to even consider seriously. Thank god it was before phones and wifi became so commonplace, it massively helped with that, writing an email once a week in some obscure internet cafe.
Coming back, it felt I've spent a lifetime away. Twice. Now I judge vacations on how it feels how long it lasted, the more it does the happier I am with deciding for it.
> One of my favorite theories on why time feels like it accelerates as you get older is that your brain tends to only store unique memories.
My theory is that it's less that it only stores unique memory, but it is always trying to resolve things into generalizable patterns. Kind of like a compression algorithm - but in this case not always accurate or reversible.
For me, time during the pandemic has been flying by because every day is nearly the same. Wake up work, maybe excercise in the evening, play video games, sleep.
I think time feels like passing faster because 1 month at 50 years old is a much smaller portion of your life than it is at 8 years old. It's a matter of relativity.
I feel that time goes faster as I get older but I don't enjoy travel. I don't make more memories in different places. All but few memories from the time I spent abroad evaporate very quickly and I'm left with general feeling that I lost a clearly defined chunk of my life. What remains more often are bad memories about being tired and uncomfortable.
There is a deeper reason for slowing perception of the passage of time: mindfulness. When you travel or do a unique experience you usually are fully committed to living these experiences. Practicing mindfulness has worked great for me to achieve the same results in my everyday life (granted, I have the chance to live in the countryside with a garden). From the outside I don't do much and live a very mundane life, but for me everyday is very different and time has slowed down. Like watching how birds or insects behave differently everyday, trees grow, and more generally how every microscopic bit of nature change slowly day after day to cycle through the seasons.
Travel can still be an enjoyable experience but there is nothing more meaningful I'm searching for.
I believe culture is a factor that we can't remember and enjoy daily commute. Most people consume just pop culture, that makes them to enjoy and fantasize only "unique" and spectacular aspects of life.
I recently traveled by bus not exactly by standards, in a more modest area. Before that I read some literature, which had as characters normal people, with some life situations in which normal people face.
It made me feel different that two-hour road, I saw people differently, I felt a little like in one of the stories and I enjoyed.
This reminds me of one of the most epic episodes of Money Heist where $character, shortly before dying, says something that resonated a lot with me:
> Mucha gente cree que en la vida solo hay un gran amor, lo que no saben es que se pueden vivir varias vidas. […] Hoy acaba algo pero es el día de tu siguiente vida. Tienes que vivir muchas vidas […], muchas...
I like to think that this can be applied not only to love (like here) but also to switching jobs, careers, places, … anything really that causes a big change (a diff, as you say) in life.
Also, if the 20 year old looks back 5 years, they were a hormonal teenager, still growing physically, treated as a minor and had never experienced half the things they'd experienced now. They were a completely different person in many respects then, and if they look back 15 years it's their very first memories.
If the 50 year old looks back 5 years, their life probably wasn't all that different. If they look back 15, their kids were still at home and they had a different job title but they were fundamentally the same person, and they feel they've been that way for a very long time.
That's just a statement, there is no logic behind why life would be experienced as percentages rather than in absolute time. Personally, I'm more prone to believe the unique experiences concept, because that actually has some basis for it, and also meshes with my real life. I have a few years in my early 20s which are just a blur (because I was working a crummy office job), but I have a year or two in my 30s which feel like a lifetime in themselves, and I can recall numerous specific days, because I was doing a totally new thing (road tripping around the mediterranean)
Also, travel tends to give a context to unpleasant or difficult experiences that make them tolerable. They led to something. They weren't mindless petty humiliations like one experiences in an office job (a recurring eight-hour economy-class flight to nowhere). They were scenes in a story.
There's a lot about travel that just sucks. Flying is horrible, especially now. Hotels are soulless. You're surrounded by people trying to take petty economic advantage of the fact that you're in an unfamiliar place. Things never happen quite the way they're planned, and while sometimes this produces serendipity, it's sometimes infuriating or even terrifying. Still, people are remarkably able to handle discomfort, pain, and even danger if there's a purpose to it. With travel experiences, there almost always is. Sure, you spent six hours in an airport because some reptilian airline executive saved a few thousand dollars by cancelling a flight... but you got there, and you got to see and do things most people, in human history, could only read about.
Travel itself isn't fun at all. It's the experiences that travel makes possible that are rewarding. The good recontextualizes the bad.
This is paradoxical in a number of ways. For one thing, putting too much prior effort into engineering the experience leads to high expectations and disappointment. "I saw the thing. Now what?" We often don't know in advance what will produce the true prize memories. For some people, this is infuriating, and they have coped by creating Instagram culture, where the focus becomes the mindless collection of digital images ("look at all the expensive experiences I can buy") that makes travel, far from an escape from our decadent and purposeless treadmill culture, an extension thereof.
Travel and "education" are the two forms of conspicuous consumption that are socially acceptable. Spend $200,000 on a car and people will make small penis jokes (as they should) behind your back. Spend $200,000 (or forgo earnings in an equivalent amount) to take pictures of yourself next to recognizable world monuments... and you're "worldly". Travel makes you more interesting, people say, and it sure can... but if it were always so, then why are the people who get to do it all the time, the rich, so uninteresting and so useless?
Ultimately, what distinguishes travel is not that the experiences are good or bad in different proportions than are possible in a more homely life, but that we have the cognitive machinery--an innate conception of story--that makes the negative experiences, even if they are in fact petty and pointless, tolerable in the context of what is gained by going through them. In office life, this doesn't exist. We spend so much time there, we know the unpleasant bits are not only unnecessary but utterly detrimental. Office life is never physically or cognitively demanding, but it is emotionally stressful, and furthermore it delivers absolutely nothing of value. The people who stole all the money sell a little bit of it back to you, so you can survive today and return tomorrow. So perhaps the lesson is not that travel is wonderful, but that today's working life is so atrocious that people will spend substantial proportions of what little disposable income the system has given them, not to have rewarding experiences (which are possible through, but not guaranteed by, travel) but merely to escape it.
This very much captures the hedonic treadmill: when you increase your baseline level of happiness, you re-normalize to the new level, with relatively little change in your absolute happiness.
But while I do think appreciating what you have is part of how to avoid the hedonic treadmill, I don't think it's a matter of learning to be happy with a routine.
I've found it possible to make a conscious effort to avoid hedonic adapation, and enjoy novel things without allowing them to become a new baseline. If you can maintain your expectations at the same level, while improving your actual circumstances noticeably above that level, you can maintain a higher level of enjoyment of your life.
It does make me think it's - once again - a privilege thing. A lot of people can't afford vacations full stop. Another group can, but only in their own country or only stepping over the border.
Single, full-time working people, especially in tech, start to unlock the ability to travel abroad, maybe even one of those big two-three week Life Changing things to somewhere exotic, but only once in a lifetime or once every few years.
Middle / upper-middle class incomes eventually get to a point of wealth and freedom where they can take vacations abroad multiple times a year.
And I think you need to be even above that level, where you don't have to worry about your base income or mortgages or whatever, where you can have this lifestyle where you can have novel things and experiences all the time. And even then there's a risk people get used to it.
Bull. This is such a boring way to look at life. You can’t go on ‘vacation’ unless you’ve reached a certain (extremely high) level of material success? Maybe if you think of vacation as a place you go for a little while, eat nice food, stay in an Airbnb, and when you come home, your dog is waiting for you at the pet hotel to go back to your condo where all your stuff, subscriptions, job and ‘real life’ is still waiting as if you never left.
Even with very little means you can travel and see the world. It’s just a matter of priorities and what kind of life you want to make for yourself. If you think you have to establish the standard life package first and then go see the world when you have spare time and money, sure, maybe you won’t until you’ve made it pretty far. Right out of high school, instead of going to university, I decided to travel abroad. I didn’t have family money. I’m from a poor family in a small town. I just saved a little money working service jobs and traveled on the cheap. CouchSurfing, hitchhiking, camping out, hostels, etc. I’m not special. My little sister is doing the same thing now on waitress money. I’ve met countless people out on the road living interesting and meaningful lives, traveling abroad without being a single, full-time tech worker. You just have to ask yourself whether you need to compete materially with everyone who’s staying in one place and accumulating stuff.
To think you only deserve a couple Life Changing, two or three week trips, even as a high earning tech worker… Such poverty of spirit makes me depressed just thinking it. Consider a few great authors, like Orwell for example. As a broke 20 something he was tramping around living a series of great stories. If he’d chosen to play it safe, stay home and work at some Important Career and collecting stuff, he’d probably never have gone to Spain in 1936, and the world would probably never have received his most important works as a result.
> To think you only deserve a couple Life Changing, two or three week trips, even as a high earning tech worker… Such poverty of spirit makes me depressed just thinking it.
How does one live this lifestyle with children and/or other dependents, such as an elderly & infirm parent or a permanently-disabled sibling?
A lack of obligations is another kind of wealth; a privilege, even. I guess only people like you can afford to rise above this "poverty of spirit".
You've made quite a leap from what I said (travel, even extensive travel, isn't a pleasure reserved for high-income tech workers) to taking care of infirm or permanently disabled family members. Why not bring up 95-year-old diabetics? They certainly can't hop on a plane to go hitchhiking across Europe. There's always someone worse off, I never said _anyone_ can do it, but it's far less exclusive than Cthulu_ makes it sound.
By the way, children are a choice in most cases. If you decide to have children in your twenties, I agree, you won't have the same flexibility that I had. That's kind of the point of what I wrote: you can pick your priorities in life. Career and children are a popular priority, but that doesn't mean everything else in life has to be a nice-to-have that you can only consider once you have the house and kids. Orwell wasn't caring for a toddler while he and his wife were fighting in Catalonia.
I mean, you're kind of choosing to care about those things.
In general, these are just different goals in life. If you want a house and kids more than you want the freedom to travel, that's cool and pretty normal. There's no stone tablet handed down from the skies that says that has to be the way it is, though.
When I was 23 I saved a few grand up and went hitchhiking around Europe on a budget of something like < 500 eur a month.
I didn't care about my base income and still don't. I think most people accidentally structure their life so that the 9-5 becomes necessary (e.g. if you rent a room in an expensive city, or a flat or house, now you need to pay for that).
The income is a means to achieve the things that you want. If you can't X because Y, and you want to X, then give up Y, not X, find a different way to do X.
I have a mortgage now, but I didn't bother with it for the longest time for precisely the reason you'd described. It locks you down. I waited until I was sure that it _wouldn't_ lock me down because I could really afford it (i.e. it's not 50% of my income from a full time job).
If I'm being charitable, I had the advantage that I could move my belongings etc in to my parents' house if I wanted to. They're pretty poor, probably in the bottom 20% in the UK, so that's not some fantastic privilege.
If you have fuckup parents (not just poor but failed in some way), then yeah, this becomes a lot harder, and I'm sorry about that.
Exactly what I was thinking. There is alway some kind of privilege to consider, like having a US or British passport, but there’s no way seeing the world a bit is a pleasure reserved for the ultra-wealthy FAANG employee. I wish we were friends, because I bet you have some interesting stories about hitchhiking across Europe, and that’s more than you can expect from a stereotypical upper class tech worker.
Yeah. Basically I'd just give it the normal caveats, you're on a Western forum and there is an implicit assumption that you're in the "golden billion" and that you're reasonably physically and mentally healthy.
Beyond that, if you couldn't find a way, then it's just not your priority, ya know?
Russian blokes from mining towns can afford to travel third class on the Trans Siberian, what's your excuse?
> Beyond that, if you couldn't find a way, then it's just not your priority, ya know?
The opening of "It's A Wonderful Life" addresses this directly. It was undeniably George Bailey's priority, but even the "golden billion" aren't free from obligation(s).
The cosmos (God & angels) in the opening takes time to prep George's guardian angel, Clarence, with George's backstory. Flashbacks are used to establish George as wanting to do nothing more than travel the world and seek adventure abroad, but his obligations at home prevent him from doing so. There's a good breakdown of this portion of the plot here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life#Plot
>If I'm being charitable, I had the advantage that I could move my belongings etc in to my parents' house if I wanted to. They're pretty poor, probably in the bottom 20% in the UK, so that's not some fantastic privilege.
Just to clarify, this suggests that your parents earn total around 16000 a year, pre-tax [0]. Perhaps your guess was accurate, and they really do - but I also find that the average person is normally wildly off in their estimates of the UK wealth distribution. A few thousands more a year would already place them in the top 50%.
Less than that, though this is more than ten years ago.
My parents are seperated, both lived in social housing at that time.
In 2022 they earn approximately 16k between them. Think minimum wage 20 hours a week, that's the ballpark.
I looked at the table of individual taxpayers income. For the relevant years, my mother's income was actually probably closer to the bottom 10% :)
There is a skew here in that you need to pay tax to be included in the table at all, though, hence 2018-19 having 1% set at 12,100 because that's the income tax threshold.
The percentage doesn't really matter though, basically what I'm saying is that like, it's useful to have a place to dump your belongings. That can be a parent, friend, whatever. It's a social capital thing more than it is a monetary thing unless you own tons of stuff and are unwilling to part with it.
For someone to say that being "single, full-time working people, especially in tech" is a matter of privilege is such a sign of our excuse-seeking times. Literally, every single one of those attributes are (or used to be before you made certain decisions) 100% within your control.
I have to wonder how people will look back at the current period. I really doubt we'll compete with the WW2 folks for the term "the greatest generation."
So if I'm not mistaken, the hedonic treadmill is not about baseline happiness. It's about increasing your set-point for joy and/or excitement. Happiness is a state, joy is fleeting.
So the goal is generally to increase your level of happiness - to have a higher baseline in terms of feeling good and having a sense of well-being.
It's futile to chase joy in place of happiness, because each hit of joy makes the next one feel less exceptional.
Although joy feels like happiness, it's not the same thing, and it's barely related. Joy often has to do with doing more. Doing something extra and exceptional to move the needle.
Happiness often has to do with doing less. With being less focused on doing/attaining/obtaining something new, and more focused on mindset: on finding happiness in what we already have.
But it's not an upward deviation from the "happiness" norm, it's deviation from the joy baseline. They're entirely separate systems.
To give an extreme example, someone who's addicted to drugs might receive extreme joy from their next hit, while at the same time being deeply unhappy, and unable to take joy from anything else. That's the hedonic treadmill at the extreme.
At the same time, someone who's very happy might be able to take joy from something simple - like a fried egg yolk with the perfect consistency - because their mind is not preoccupied with seeking bigger and better joy, they may be more free to find it in simple places where it arises naturally.
Did you mean to link to some other data? This list shows that the Nordic state with the highest suicide rate is Finland at number 38, in which suicides are about 30% higher than the European average (although of course Greenland remains an interesting artefact). I don't think that really fits your description.
It's always been pretty interesting (and I'd say quite well-known) that the Nordics do have a somewhat higher suicide rate than other similar states. But it's also likely a pretty bad proxy; I'd be suspicious of a metric suggesting the average North Korean citizen is substantially happier than the average Finn.
Probably better is the World Happiness Report (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-fo...). It's a bit arbitrary for my taste, but does at least have a pretty long history as well as plenty of transparency about what it's measuring and why. And it consistently places the Nordics in the top ten.
Disagree. I grew up in Scandinavia but have since lived many different places all over the world and for me it remains enjoyable to move someplace new, get to know it and the culture over a few years, and if I stagnate or get bored, switch it up again. It has also paradoxically been good both for my career and personal life. (exposed to more potential jobs, friends, partners etc I otherwise wouldn't have)
YMMV and it's certainly not for everyone. But I'm skeptical that staying in your comfort zone your whole life will do anyone much favors. (and the odd few week trip here or there doesn't really count, by all means all travel is great but vacation and just passing places through is fundamentally different from spending at least a few months or even years somewhere)
I will say that I met my wife traveling and my kids were born on a different continent than me. There is a lot to find out there but travel as a value itself gets old and doesn’t fulfill your soul like it felt like it would when I was young.
To me, it seems like the comic is saying, rather than using a switch in your environment as a crutch for happiness, find happiness in your routine.
Having a routine that makes you happy is important and not bad advice!
But sometimes, at least for me, I kind of exhaust my options for happiness in a given environment. Eg maybe I've already gotten a job with the best employer in a given location and can't climb any higher professionally, friends have moved away or started a family or whatever, hobbies and activities that used to be novel and fun have become repetitive and dull, I've mastered the local language I wanted to learn etc etc.
That feeling, combined with a basically infinite and always in flux list of places and things I want to experience before my time is up, makes switching my environment up very powerful and enjoyable for me.
Happily admit there's downsides to not "settling down" too and it's not for everyone. But I think most people would benefit from fundamentally switching up their environment at least a few times in their life. If it turns out you were happier where you started you can always go back. But you'll never know other places if you don't give them a shot.
I agree - I also feel like it would be dumb luck to have been born in the place best suited for me. I’d rather experience a few places that seem appealing and then pick one. Life of course gets in the way but that’s been my way so far. With young kids and getting more responsibilities I think it’s time to slow down and settle for a while.
Sure, the act of travelling seems to be his bade state which stays constant. Like, you can not travel and be content with what you have. Or you can travel and be content with switching it up.
It is what the comic is saying, but the conclusion is different. The comic concludes that we should not attempt to escape by changing routine, but we must accept the routine and find ways to relax within it. The previous poster says that the excitement of changing your routine is a good solution, although temporary, it's still helpful.
I tend to agree: it's really nice to build up experiences and "novel routines". But you can't do it forever, at some point this becomes a "meta-routine" that drains you (it's not easy to keep changing your life).
The idea that it's better to stay where you are and instead meditate and build up good habits is great and I subscribe to it, but with caution. It should not be an alternative solution to, say, escaping a toxic work environment or a bad place. You shouldn't "meditate away" real problems.
for me, moving = giving up close friends. in my heart I love them but in reality we quickly lose touch because we can no longer do things together. sure I can try to make new friends at the new place but it seems to get harder the older I get and there's a part of me who feels like staying long term in one place for those long term connections is better than lots of acquaintances all over the world
I personally despise travel, almost every aspect of it. Planning, making reservations, trying to figure out airline tickets, packing, parking, waiting, being groped by the pre-flight fondlers, cramming myself into a seat, sitting there for hours, the mystifyingly slow process of disembarking, getting to the hotel, registration, lugging luggage, the cautious exploration of the room, the scan for bedbugs, arraying the hopefully adequate creature comforts imported to the destination on some tatty drawer, all of it is terrible. But then people say, "Oh, but the thing you came for!" And whatever it is leaves me unmoved. I could have been shown a photo of it for all that it matters. Or conferences were nothing was conveyed. Then you get to do all of it in reverse, perhaps with a careful notebook of receipts tucked away.
Even hearing about it. And what is beyond the pale is that if word gets out you don't like travel, the Travel People simply won't have it. They're like a cult.
In my black little heart, I wonder if people would on the whole travel less if they weren't permitted to speak about it, because lord knows some bore bringing up their time in Nepal yet again at the merest whiff of conversational relevance makes my cortical folds smooth out.
So, let me get this clear, I just ... get in my car and go in a direction. No medication, no change of clothes, no toothbrush. I stop at some random location for the ... view? I ... sleep in the car? Help me out here, because none of this sounds like a good idea.
Well if I am being made to go to a conference, I kinda need my money back, you know? Bleak or not, they want receipts.
A long time ago I was headed to a photo shoot with the owner of a Ford GT40. As we cruised along he commented that it was the perfect road trip vehicle. Being young and a chronic over-packer and over-preparer, I asked how that was possible, as its total storage consisted of a glovebox and a cupholder. He said "all you need is a pair of sunglasses and a credit card!"
Which in retrospect was a bit of guy-who-can-afford-a-GT40 privilege, but it also changed my philosophy of travel. The stuff you need to survive can be obtained cheaply and easily. The joy of travel comes from what you leave behind.
Aside from my medicine, I suppose, which I have to arrange in advance. If I want to blow that cash on more clothes and such. Staying in a random hotel.
I just get nothing out of travel. I go there, I stand there looking at $thing. It's a $thing. Hoo-ray.
If the joy of travel comes from what you leave behind, well, most people spend more time not-traveling than traveling, and it would probably behoove them to increase their joy by ridding themselves of whatever it was they typically leave behind.
Why is someone not enjoying something someone else does sad? You probably have things you do not enjoy, yes? And people pestering you to partake of those things you do not enjoy ("just try the liver") annoys you, right? And if someone told you that made them sad you would ... well, I don't know, what would you do?
I shared, and in many ways, still share your sentiment. But, having recently done my first international trip (to Mexico) for about three weeks, I would say my perspective has changed.
I think it helped that I stayed in hostels. Basically, all of the fun I had came from meeting people at breakfast or at bars, and then doing things with those people. The people you meet at hostels are open to meeting people and, being travelers themselves, are usually coming from somewhere interesting, with an open mind, and with nothing to do. I had a lot of great conversations with people I wouldn't have normally ever met, learned a lot about their cultures, and learned to get really comfortable meeting and befriending people.
The other thing I consciously tried to do was be open to everything. If someone invited me to go do something I hadn't done before, I'd say yes unless I had a good reason not to. That led me to a lot of interesting places!
The experience for me, as an American in Mexico, I would also say genuinely did make me rethink how I understood Mexico and Mexican culture in the US. I would be very excited to go see firsthand a lot of the countries that have influenced me in some way, because it really seems different when you see it directly rather than just on TV.
I think it also helped that Mexico was very cheap and I had no responsibilities back at home. I showed up with no plans to do anything at all, and no expectations. Some of the days especially at first were relatively boring. But it felt okay, as part of the goal was challenging myself to enjoy life even when I really wasn't doing anything.
Have you considered traveling in ways besides simply sightseeing? I think the travel industry pushes one idea of travel onto us, but it's not the only way. Many of the people I met were lifelong travelers, who worked in their home countries until they saved up enough to travel for six months, and then they would go and try to make their money last as long as they could while still enjoying themselves before repeating the process.
And I agree the logistics of travel are terrible. But, it wasn't actually too bad on my trip here. It was easy enough to book a flight to Mexico. And once I was there, I basically booked space at hostels for 1-3 days at a time, and then just extended my stay one day at a time if I wasn't bored yet. Unlike the hundreds of hotels in big cities, there are usually 3-10 hostels in any given area of Mexico so the choice was always easy, and since they're so cheap ($15-25/night) and have good availability I never really worried about booking them.
All of this said, I think I could probably have traveled even more adventurously. And actually that's a good summary of the mindset I think you should consider: be adventurous. Try to challenge yourself by eating foods you normally wouldn't eat, going places you wouldn't normally go, talking to people you wouldn't normally talk to. I think you'll get a lot more from travel that way.
Well, I don't speak Spanish. Going to a country without a working command of the language seems like a bad idea to me. This seems like an extraversion vs. introversion thing, because "meeting a bunch of new people" is on my list of things I do not enjoy. It would seem even worse if I did not know the language.
New foods don't thrill me, and I have to be careful with what I eat anyway. As to enjoying life when I wasn't really doing anything, I could do that at home.
There's nothing about travel that is for me. Even if I could teleport across borders, I don't think I would. Other people like being in new places, and I just ... don't.
After reading the article it seems that the author frames the problem in the wrong way.
Travel is not a _cure_ for the mind. There is no cure for the human condition.
It's better described as maintenance. If I'm feeling cooped up indoors and I jump on the metro and go to Chinatown, does that cure all of my existential ills?
No, but it's fun, and tomorrow I can go somewhere else.
The same is true of all activities. I quit my job a while back and now I'm studying full time. Is that going to scratch my itch forever? No, eventually I'll get bored and want to do something else.
But now I've done more different things, I'm more well rounded, and I experienced a lot of joy over and above what I'd have if I just sat in the office counting beans all year.
I'm going to meet some friends this afternoon, and that's not gonna cure my mind either, same as eating lunch doesn't cure hunger.
Yeah I agree, what a strange premise, do people really have this expectation on travel? And the conclusion too, is to replace travel with mindful meditation and try to use that one single thing instead to fix everything.
Indeed humans, many of us at least, thrive on novelty: new things, new experiences. Meditation, thankfulness, and other forms of inward focus may bring some respite from the desire for novelty, but...
What is the point of life if not to enjoy it? What defines enjoyment varies from person to person, but for some of us it is ABSOLUTELY certain that some environments are more pleasant than others. Some people/friends/lovers are more pleasant than others. Some foods are more pleasant than others. Our tastes and interests change over time.
We could live on one place, tend our little garden, eat the same meals each week, talk to the same people, and meditate. For those who want that life, great for them. It's not for me.
The world is vast, and there are so many experiences discover and enjoy. And actually, a Thai beach suits me VERY well. It is my next long stay, and after it there will probably be other long stays. Maybe when I get too old to move about, I'll pick a spot to die.
I think this "stay put and be zen" mentality is less common for tech people (especially developers). If we were satisfied with status quo, we wouldn't be constantly trying to develop solutions to "problems". If we were more able to be satisfied, we would still be using Fortran and COBOL (or pick any old language). There would be no smartphones (for better or worse). Heck, you could unwind all human advancement back to pre-agriculture days... which might actually be an improvement... but that cat is too far out of the bag.
Have fun in Thailand! I lived there two years, from 2019-2021. Not exactly the best time frame to experience the country, but it was awesome nonetheless. There is so much to do and see there, and the energy is intoxicating.
>"And actually, a Thai beach suits me VERY well. It is my next long stay, and after it there will probably be other long stays."
I was curious if you've looked at the state of this recently? Is this doable for a foreigner/digital nomad again? Any insights? What are the long stay options there? I know visas used to be very generous, I've no idea now. It does sound nice though.
TLDR: it's very doable, and I will be spending many months there again this year.
I spent several weeks of Nov/Dec 2021 in Phuket while I was between contracts. Things were just starting to open up and come back to life as restrictions were being lifted. Many places were still closed or had gone out of business, but there was no lack of dining, massage, bar, or outdoor activities.
Internet was reliable and fast with my 30 EUR 30-day unlimited data Thai SIM card (AIS brand if I remember correctly). Most hotels had decent wifi as well, but I often didn't even bother using it.
There are multiple visa options (which you can do a search for), and there's a subreddit just on this topic if you don't mind digging a bit. All options involve some expense and/or extra effort, but it's still a small cost considering the benefits of being there.
Lodging is easy and cheap (particularly with COVID 50% discounts which may be vanishing slowly). My advice if you're going to stay for more than 30 days is to get a hotel for 5 days, and then start asking around and just walking/driving around looking for flats or rooms to rent. Not everything is listed online. There are also a lot of Youtube bloggers who like to show off places they encounter.
One can live comfortably for $1500/mo or less, or frugally for $1000 or less. It's also possible to spend $5000+/mo if you want to live in luxury. Speaking fankly, luxury villas and "human entertainment" tend to be the big costs for some people. I can't speak to specifics since that's not my kind of scene (and honestly I didn't really see many other visitors who were acting like high roller party boys in Vegas).
Be aware that officially, working while in Thailand is not approved without the proper visa (which probably 99% of DNs don't have). Practically though, sitting on the balcony behind a computer (and getting paid to do so) for several hours a day is not high risk. Just don't flaunt it.
I don't know. If you live your self repeating life and weeks become months and months become years and then you go to say Korea for half a year and make new friends and pick up new routines and eat new foods and then you go back to your routine, isn't your life just better than if you hadn't gone? The new stuff might still become a routine, but it is still extra.
It helps if your life problems are true first world problems (viz. tech guy with million or more in savings but thinks the cushy job isn’t rewarding enough and wants more purpose or something). It doesn’t matter you’re sitting in Kyoto eating sushi if you’re depressed to begin with. Only therapy and treatment could help. Maybe.
Just a side note - you absolutely don't need to be millions rich to travel for extended periods. You just need to have few financial obligations that are location dependent.
In an extreme example (which some of us fantasize about), you could have all your necessary possession in two bags, have no "home" (and no car and no other anchors), and travel the world for less than many people spend living in one place. This is especially true if you take a US/EU salary and spend time in much lower cost of living places.
The comic seems to be saying that travel and living overseas doesn’t even help with simple problems like being bored in your routine beyond the very short term, which doesn’t really match my personal experience at least.
I guess it depends, I used to travel a lot when I was in my 20s (I guess it would add to about 5 years spread over 8 years period) and now after close to 10 years being home it just feel like it never happened: sure I do have some memories, stories and some connections on Facebook to people I haven't seen in many years. Don't get me wrong it was fun and interesting, but I guess thats it.
But maybe thats me, when I was traveling I was feeling happy and excited, but I feel same just walking in the park outside my home and actually looking forward to just get my coffee at usual place and spend time programming. Basically same routine, now I just have more comfortable setup.
You are missing the point. The article focuses on mindless tourism as a source of excitement rather than any deeper meaning. Just an embodiment of the hedonistic treadmill or consumerism.
The article makes some valid points. I did a year and a half working as a "digital nomad" traveling through the middle east, Europe and Africa. It was an incredible part of my life - just an incredibly dense stream of experiences; some good and some bad, some fun, some challenging, from pure joy to wrenching heartbreak and everything in between.
There was a lot of superficial joy and excitement during that period. And as the article says, there were times when the novelty of going somewhere new, seeing the sights, meeting new people wore off, and that was really depressing. I felt the lack of roots: of having people who really knew me around, and having the chance to build things which take time and stability.
At the same time, there were a lot of real experiences that time. I faced and overcame certain challenges, and I met certain people, and I had certain experiences which fundamentally changed who I am and how I and how I approach the world. And just that project of living with something approaching to absolute freedom for an extended period allowed me to choose who I want to be in a way which would not have been possible otherwise.
I'm on a different project now, and I don't think I will be disappearing for a year and a half any time soon, but I still find travel to be an incredibly valuable tool. I like to set up trips which include the right mix of planning and improvisation to put me in that mindset where I have to be open to possibility and really engage with the world around me. Almost like an experiment where certain parameters are set in order to test myself in a certain way. And I have found that during a trip, or coming back from one, is often when I can think the most clearly about my life and make important decisions.
Travel will not solve your problems on its own, but it can certainly help.
> Travel will not solve your problems on its own, but it can certainly help.
I don't agree that most of what you wrote there in any sense refutes the article or Seneca's letter on which is it is based, but this line definitely rings true to me. I think there are two reasons why it can help:
1. there was a line in a book from the 1940s that I browsed once in a cafe in London, written by someone who was (it seems) one of that era's most committed Egyptologists. Early in the book, he wrote (and I have to paraphrase it now, because I can't remember the elegant, if dated, prose he used): the point of travelling to places where things seem strange and different is so that when you return (or choose) somewhere, even if you had spent your whole life there before, it now also seems strange and different.
2. Getting a sense of the expanded boundaries of possibility can help make the walls of the Box of Daily Experience a bit more porous. When you have a clearer picture of the many different Boxes of Daily Experience that you and others live in around the world, it can (I think) become easier to find a new relationship with your own.
Another angle on this: I took 8 months off work, did lots of DIY, adopted two greyhounds, started walking them 20km+ per day. It has been life changing and yet I don't think I've been more than 50km from my house at any point during that time. So maybe life altering experiences happen because you alter your life, not change where your are.
I wouldn’t discount alternative environments for stimulating latent or dorment parts of a person, but you certainly have a good point about the perennial capacity for self transformation
Agreed. Never been a full nomad, as I always had my own base in Berlin, but I’ve been around enough of them (and wrote reports about it) long enough to see it.
Digital Nomadism hasn’t solved the problem of rootlessness. If you’re nomadic long enough, you risk ending up with a very odd kind of depression. It’s also a different way of getting stuck on the same thing. Most nomads I know tend to stay longer and longer in a place, and to go back to that place eventually.
I’m still a huge fan of it, and I think that remote work and work from anywhere is the only way forward for most intellectual workers.
Yet, I can see the problem more clearly now that I’ve forcefully stayed put for two years, then when I was kind of compulsively traveling.
Nonetheless I write this while on a 2.5 months workation break in Southern Europe to flee from Berlin’s gray winter (which has a devastating effect on anyone’s mood).
I think the key difference between your narrative and the authors is that you kept moving. It seems like when you were a nomad you never stayed in one place for too long.
Travel is like Pink Floyd, Rick & Morty, and Steven Universe: great by itself but it has an insufferable fanbase. You can't even talk about going on vacation without some yahoo launching into a spiel about how all the world's problems would be fixed if all Americans had passports.
There is definitely some truth to that but I feel that it is an unbalanced view. It really describes archetypal escapism. Not everyone travels to escape, and even for those who travel to escape it's usually not just an escape, you learn a lot while traveling. It enriches you, not just with memories which make you long to travel again.
You can certainly take the lessons about the mind, to be grateful and staying in the present moment, but also keep the variety in your life, whatever that means to you. That is what optimizes your experience.
Descriptions like these always miss one crucial thing: The time component. In a similar vein, there's this saying that if people get in a terrible accident and lose a limb, they are back to their normal happiness after a year.
Now imagine, you are in an accident, you lose a limb. Exactly one year later, you are in another accident, lose another limb, and this goes on and on and after 80 years in your death bed, you look back on a miserable life of being traumatized every year.
Now imagine, you make new experiences, before they become your daily box, as the article shows. Say, it takes a year to become the new normal. After a year, you find something new that excites you, before it becomes the new normal. And this goes on and on and after 80 years, in your death bed, you reflect back on a life that kinda was never dull.
Is this a defense of the hedonic treadmill? No, make what you want of this, but I guess that is why many people find it enticing. The counter argument almost always misses the time component.
I definitely like being in different places, and do up and go to them for either certain events or certain people or to check off a personal box. I don't go to those places to really change my routine though, I actually feel privileged that I can go to places long enough to replicate a routine. I've done the 5-day trip across a 3-day weekend thing to rush to all of the sites and get depressed that its over and leave, and I am never going to be in a circumstance where I do that again. I would much rather get integrated into a new place, join a couple classes, have a new crew, continue my projects in the new setting. If I do wage work, I'm going to have to set expectations that the "unlimited vacation policy" means I'm not reporting in for 2 weeks per quarter.
But, one thing that stands out to me is how other people assume something like "if I was that 'successful' I wouldn't be doing X thing" or like "what are you doing on hackernews/social media/internet" as if they wouldn't. As if after one week of travel they wouldn't be doing things they are familiar with.
I think its interesting that people don't ever get the opportunity to know! Which is honestly one of my driving factors: I like living in coveted neighorhoods for 10-days to a month just to see if I would really like it. To see what the convenience is really like, or the perception from others that I receive while living there, or what the noise or smells are. Its so much worse, in my opinion, to actually covet or strive for those things just to be disillussioned after all of that energy and sacrifice.
It sounds fun- I will say that living somewhere for a week or a month is pure honeymoon so don’t think it’s being very objective. A year, two years, five years. My feeling about a place changes to polar opposites during that time. Love it, hate it, learn to re-love it despite the warts
Oh totally agree, I’m not trying to win a contest, there isnt enough time in life to live that many places and build relationships with people there.
4-6 weeks is when my new social activities with new people just start to snowball! Definitely not long enough.
I think its more than long enough to know what living in any particular neighborhood is like though.
One other thing is that you are able to notice other people that travel like that. The proverbial “jetsetters” even without the socialite connotations, nomadic. Many more in the last few years. Interesting crowd. There are people that like the same circuits of places so thats nice.
I tried traveling more, but I find out after the first day, I’m no longer as excited. Also can be a frustrating and time consuming experience when you don’t have a strong passport.
I’m a “busy body” and I find novelty almost every week in my environ or nearby. I always push myself to try new things / start a conversation with strangers / group activities / etc. Even things I have been doing for a long time like working out at the public park or playing football, still gets me excited like a kid.
Admittedly, the biggest improvement in my happiness was moving to a developed country.
Nice article and all, especially the cute drawings. I don’t agree with their conclusions.
It’s pretty hard to become a surf champion if you grow up in Minnesota and stay there.
Each new “reality bubble” or “box” I created in response to different circumstances in a different environment. I changed, or rather, different sides of my personality had to develop to adapt to a different environment.
I’m not speaking as a vacationing cubicle worker, but as someone who completely reinvented himself after age 30, learned a half dozen languages, visited 50 countries usually on local peoples sofas, and then finally changed countries of habitation several times and am now a dual national and feeling both mental boxes quite strongly attempting to box me in.
The part where I agree with the author is that part in which our reality is limited by our own mental box of perception and acculturation.
Our choices and responses to external stimuli determine if we fold or adapt to new opportunities.
Will we hide in our shell or will we come out and be molded by new experiences?
Please note, the instagram vacation model is accurate and hollow as outlined by the author, I just think that they copped out with their lame trite conclusion that I have personally found to be untrue.
living abroad is the best thing happened to me, i'm grateful for every minute of it. it's just cool.
so, seneca might be right, changing the sky doesn't change our soul. but changing the sky helps our soul to change if you are in the right disposition. because sometimes being stuck in a place physically, also get us stuck mentally.
traveling instead, meh: to me traveling it's just consumption, and consumption is tiresome and boring.
That's a really good point which I don't think was mentioned in TA - new experiences tend to shake up the mind, which can lead to new though processes and new ideas. It can be a real boost for creativity.
So going to a new place can shake up one's thoughts and lead to some great new ideas, and then the routine of the new place can give one time to work with those new ideas and perhaps make something.
That was a lot of comics and explanation just to say, "even travel eventually resets back into the familiar and dull, so instead take joy from being grateful for familiar things instead".
I've traveled a little bit, but as I've gotten older, travel has become something I'm not interested in at all. A lot of expense for very little reward in my experience. I know that a lot of people have "travel" on the list of things they plan to do when they retire, but I just don't see the allure.
I think one reason I travel is to see family in other countries but also to see other weather. Right now it's cold as hell where I live and I just need someplace sunny to go see and experience.
If all you do is visit art museums, then sure. While I lived in Thailand I saw:
-- The British cemetery for the POWs that worked on the death railway (The Bridge on the River Kwai) -- and saw that many multiples of Thais died for every western soldier who died
-- The awesome canal boats, that stop to drop people off and pick people up in under 20 seconds.
-- Malls with endless 5 foot and 10 foot shops -- MBK mall has 3,000 shops in it!
-- More more more malls: MBK is across from Siam, which is next to Central World, which is across the street from Gaysorn, which is next to The Market, which is a block away from Platinum, and it goes on and on.
-- Thailand's air and space museum, where they proudly display the remains of a U.S. plane they shot down in WWII, along with a bunch of their own aircraft.
-- Amazing beaches -- of course.
-- The Thailand Museum of Science and Industry, which was awesome.
-- Street food, so much street food.
-- Shops selling nothing but electric fans, shops selling ancient typewriters, shops selling vintage cameras, and oh so much more.
And so much more, of course. Every day was an adventure. I was there two years and I miss it.
It's not even travel, its relocation. Yeah it says "Travel is stressful because vacations just last a few days." (sorry, Americans) and then talks about relocating.
Travel to different places (or even to places you've been before) does bring novelty which stimulates the mind.
This reminds me of two things. British Weather and the The Myth of Sisyphus.
We have an old saying in the UK (it was popularised by an Austrian band, but it proceeds the song), "everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you'. In the UK it rains a lot, and folks think by going somewhere sunny it will resolve all their issues and lack of meaning in their life. Any change is fleeting and temporary.
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical premise by Albert Camus. Sisyphus was a greek character who the gods had condemned to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain, where the stone would fall back of its own weight. The gods believed there to be no more dreadful a punishment that is both futile and hopeless.
The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls "the absurd." or absurdism, a universe devoid of the meaning we long from it, as we toil through each day, repeating the mundane.
Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (meaning or order) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos, often devoid of meaning). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover a meaning through a leap of faith / dogma, by placing our hopes in a God beyond this world, or we will conclude that life is meaningless and be left with either suffering through or committing suicide.
In The Myth Of Sisyphus Camus claims that the only important philosophical question boils down to suicide and should we continue to live or not? The rest is secondary, because no one dies for scientific or philosophical arguments, they quickly abandon them when their life is at risk. Yet people do take their own lives because they judge them meaningless, or they sacrifice them for "meaningful" causes. This suggests that questions of meaning supersede all other scientific or philosophical questions. As Camus puts it: “I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions"
The point Camus is making is that there is no solution to the problem of living an absurd, meaningless existence. His argument is that the only way to confront it is to fully embrace the absurd, discard all hope, and live in revolt by throwing yourself so fully at a task in life that you lose yourself in the joy of the struggle.
Camus emphatically rejects any worldview that would leave us "at peace" with our existence. Our existence is an endless revolt against the Absurd, a 'fuck you' where we are fully aware of the meaninglessness of our lives yet choosing to live regardless.
I wanted to travel directly after college but instead got straight to work. I'm now 31 and in the last year have developed a couple dozen food allergies, to the point that I very literally cannot eat out at restaurants. I have to prepare everything myself.
This change has completely destroyed my will to travel. Or, rather, makes me regret not having traveled when I had the chance to enjoy one of the best parts of it: the food. And not just the food itself, though that is a big draw -- more important is the logistics of not having to cook all your food yourself, needing specific products from specific brands (and if you can't find them you're shit out of luck), etc. Travel for me is only possible in places where I have a kitchen (so, AirBnB), and the supplies required to meal prep. I'll spend a not insignificant amount of time in my new locale cooking and cleaning dishes, like I constantly do at home. No wandering around town checking out a restaurant. No airport food. No meeting new friends and them spontaneously treating me to dinner.
So, so many lost experiences. When I get in this mood and remember what life was like just a year ago before all these food allergies hit, when I was still planning on traveling the world "once Covid blew over," it makes me so, so sad. I can't believe I lost my chance just because I chose to work right out of college (worse, an internship that didn't end up hiring me).
Point being:
For whatever critique of travel this post might offer, just...if you can, travel. I never, ever thought that I would lose the ability to be somewhere and just...eat, without thinking. To try new food without fear of literally dying. I never knew that could happen to someone. I never knew the simple joy of eating somewhere I'd never been before could be taken away, that I would be trapped to the same tiny list of ingredients (ever-shrinking, I might add), the same depressingly small number of combinations formed by them, and by extension the physical entrapment, the loneliness, the sense of not being part of the group because I can't share in the meal.
God I hate it.
If you can, just fucking travel. Do it while you still can.
My dad was both a workaholic plus extremely, extremely, frugal despite being pretty successful. Frugal cars, frugal homes, frugal vacations, avoiding eating out, etc. The idea was that he'd work and save hard through his working years, then enjoy retirement to the fullest. He and my mom were looking forward to traveling the world, etc.
Then right before he retired he got something called IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). While not life threatening, it reduced his quality of life significantly as well as sending him into depression. While he is a lot better both physically and mentally now. I would say he is 90%+ recovered in both aspects. But the damage is done, and he is now almost a homebody watching movies and Youtube all day because he fears not being close to the bathroom for extended periods (specifically, a comfortable home bathroom, not a public toilet). His lifelong golf hobby is effectively gone too.
Needless to say, I was raised to be frugal, which I always resisted. But after seeing what happened to my dad (and as a result, mom too), that resistance has turned into a fuck no. I certainly don't advocate splurging above your means, but I do advocate living life to the fullest, even if that means spending substantial money.
Other than going back to visit family in Korea a few times, my mom has never ventured outside the US northeast. My wife and I have made it a point to take her on a plane trip once a year since my dad can't, and she has been absolutely thrilled.
Bought my dad his dream car (a V8 BMW 5-series) because he still can't break out of his frugal mindset despite being financially well-off. Got yelled at for not being frugal and spending money when I gave it to him, but in spite of that he absolutely loves driving it.
I have no allergies, so I can't imagine how that is. However, I had a back injury 3 years ago. I thought it'd heal fast but I got to the point of being afraid to carry my backpack when traveling somewhere. The chance of having an incredibly sharp pain makes me fear almost any kind of activity.
I also put off traveling before and now I regret not doing it while I was physically able to walk/hike around for hours on end.
I did physical therapy, swimming etc to make it feel better, but by now it's clear it will never improve past a certain point.
No, auto-immune means that your immune system attacks the body. Allergies are where your immune system flags non-self, non-harmless stuff as harmful.
And the answer is: no one knows.
It’s rare for adults with no history of food allergies as children to develop them (that’s me —- ate whatever I wanted until last year). It’s even more rare for them to develop more than one or two. So, it’s probably just the generic lottery. Some gene decided to flip on one day. Just cosmically bad luck.
That said, I do have a pet theory that a high dose of methylprednisolone corticosteroids just prior to the appearance of the allergies fucked my immune system somehow. Unfortunately there’s zero other documented cases/scientific precedent for the hypothesis, besides the dubious timing. I was on them for two weeks, and literally the day after I finished tapering off of them, I started having reactions to tons of foods. Whether that’s correlation or causation will likely never be proven.
And even still, even if I could prove it, there’s fuck all I can do about getting a normal life back, because when adults develop food allergies, they’re permanent 99.9% of the time. We don’t have a way to “teach” the immune system that it mistakenly flagged something. That’s the holy grail right there but after seeing how far off we are from that, I’ve lost a lot of faith in medical science. You would think we’d be even in the same galaxy as producing that sort of cure, but we don’t even understand why the allergies develop yet. Plus, funding for food allergy research is funneled towards children —- who, quite often, grow out of their allergies as they reach adulthood. There’s reason to believe that the mechanisms of food allergy development differ significantly between adults and children, so all that research for kids might not even apply to me. The whole thing is a giant mess and I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of ever eating like a normal person again.
You know the quote "wherever you go, there you are?" At some put point, I started putting the emphasis on you rather than there. Sure, you can go see Paris, and it's a lovely city, but you're still you. Some people travel to "find themselves," but never do. It's still you.
Travel certainly changes people. But it depends on your openness to new ideas. Some travelers expect to find their own country in a different place - these people will not be altered by travel. However if you consider travel as an exercise in adaption to other peoples’ ways of life, then it certainly will challenge some of the axioms that were instilled in you from a young age by your society.
Why can't you find your country in a different one?because you are supposed to stay put and true to your country that luck decided for you and obey some societal rule?
So George Harrison's "The Inner Light", which he cribbed, lyrically, from Tao Te Ching (Chapter 47):
Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.
This may be true for others but I definitely count myself out. Travel is when I am truly at peace with myself and my mind.
Travel for me though is on the road, an extended road trip with lots of empty time just driving, bored, thinking, reflecting. The day to day distractions gone. This kind of travel to distinguish from the kind of travel that is navigating tourists on Waikiki or trying to find an ATM in Seoul.
Although, since I mentioned trying to find an ATM in Seoul, there is a lot to learn about yourself when you travel and see other cultures up close. It opens your mind to all the other possible ways there are to live, makes you question why you are going about your own life the way you have been, how much of it is autopilot, how much of it is because it is all you've known. I guess I generally think all travel is good.
Agree with the final sentiment though: strive to find peace within one's self. Travel for me though is when I have found I can best achieve that. For others it might be reading, hiking, out on a motorcycle or bicycle. (Actually, all of those help me as well.)
Enjoyed this greatly! I have an important distinction in my mind about travel for work and travel for fun/vacation. In 2021 I was just a few days short of 300 nights in a hotel. I enjoy the little experiences while being on the road more than anything else I did. The brief odd insight of a short conversation with a stranger you will never see again. Understanding of the parts of this world you lack any control over, and finding out how quickly you can blame yourself for them. Meeting a hurricane survior who is a few states away from 'home' and then being told in such a calm and stoic manner, they lost everything they owned. And a feeling of dejavu you meet someone months later, living out of a hotel for the same reason.
Its brutally humbling if you let the portions of vanity and purpose you cling on fall by the wayside.
It's real actual work traveling. I would have a difficult time being excited for a trip anywhere now. Except the excitement my partner, friend, brother, so on.. would feel for the exact reasons this post conveyed, or maybe it is the former.
To travel for work alone, is more isolating than living alone and working a 9-5. It may not be at first, but it is. Yet I would not trade the last six years for anything.
So, wow is this a long essay. But this:
"And inevitably, you’re back in the box, counting down the days in which you can do it again."
...is incorrect. It's far from inevitable. I've traveled to another country about every 2 years for a couple decades, and not once has it been like this.
Travel gives you more patterns to draw from, like dabbling in another programming language can help you out even if you end up using the same one for your day job.
Some things that might make travel feel awesome that have nothing to do with the travel per-se (and can be replicated at home).
1. You are taking a break from work.
2. You are travelling light - instead of 2 tonnes of 'stuff' to look after, you have a backpack or small suitcase, and very little to take care of.
3. You are engaged to your ideal level. For some people that means seeing a couple of sights, for others that means 100 miles of mountain biking in a day. But you've planned it for your fitness / energy levels and for what 'unwinding' means to you. (As opposed to work where your bosses are trying to extract from you, or if you are like me you are putting pressure on yourself).
4. You see more of the daylight (not stuck in office).
I would say that working fewer hours and WFH can give many of the nice feelings of being on a holiday. I think a lot of people want to travel because working life sucks alot. The old way - stuck in an office prison for 9 hours a day plus a train or bus or car 'cage' for another 1-2 hours it is no surprise that people want to get away from that. The narrative "I want to travel, be cultured, I want to see the world etc." then kicks in.
What a long winded way to come to a narrow conclusion - "Stay at your day job and enjoy it."
Environment matters a lot. It's not "travel for 1 week" that will cure the mind, but rather, removing the slave labor you don't enjoy from the box entirely.
The author seems to miss this critical point (that many people are unhappy with their day job because it's basically debt/wage slavery without ownership).
This is incorrect, at least as a general principle.
I haven't done "slave labor" for more than 20 years, having initially imagined I was rich enough to retire at 32 (that turned out to be wrong), then later converting an open-source passion project into a very comfortable middle class living. No boss, no rules, no schedule, just lots of people who love what I do and that includes me.
However ... the Box of Daily Experience is still a feature of my life too.
I am not oppressed. My work does not depress me. But the key point of TFA (and Seneca's letter that inspired it) is that the details matter less than you think: the "oppression" of the Box of Daily Reality comes more from the way you think about it rather than its actual contents.
There are plenty of days when I reflect on how it was just another day, same old same old, completely predictable. Granted, I don't have to put up with the BS of a regular job, which eliminates one aspect of the Box of Daily Reality for me. But then again, I work (mostly alone) from home, and so my days involve very little physical interaction with anyone. Equivalent to the suffering of slave labor? Probably not, but just a different element of my particular Box of Daily Experience.
Well opportunities multiply as they are seized, which can either be a blessing or a curse. In the end, it's how much molecules you managed to move during your lifetime here, in this place, this dream. Personally I try not to move that many molecules or 'make a dent' because there are other, much more capable and better positioned people to do that for me.
Now the question becomes: are those impactful actions benevolent moving of molecules or malevolent? Generally I'm seeing it as malevolent with things like climate change and dropping bombs on innocent people who become another statistic or 'collateral damage'.
Yes there is a lot of good in the world, and I probably have 'mean world syndrome'[0], but when you're exposed to the news more than ever now via the Internet, you can't help but think we're living in a very divided and malicious world.
For me personally the combination of immigrating permanently to Europe plus remote work gave me an ever-changing box, in a good way. There’s lots of very different cultures just a drive away, and remote work lets me head out often and for extended stays. Even the last couple years which were a big damper on travel, I never got bored of my new home in the Netherlands or felt stuck in a routine. I’ve been here for six years now, probably three here and three in other nearby countries on extended visits.
I’m sure the cartoon resonates with some people but I don’t think it’s as universal as they are making it seem. I hope it doesn’t convince people not to at least try to see if travel or living overseas makes life richer and more interesting.
I will say I wasn’t trying to cure anything wrong with my mind when moving overseas, so maybe that’s a difference I’m not properly accounting for.
How were you able to spend 6 years in NL and the three in other nearby countries? Did move jobs from NL to new countries in the EU that sponsored a visa for you in those nearby countries?
The Netherlands has a treaty called DAFT where any US citizen can come to start a business. It’s also very pro knowledge migrant, the visas are easy to get and they also offer a huge tax benefit for 5 years.
Once here, you can travel in the Schengen area visa free.
Ah OK. I have heard of this. Can you live in other areas as well, like say you wanted to move to Belgium or Germany while keeping your business in NL. You could do that with a DAFT visa?
Well, you can visit those other places for I think up to half the year and 90 days at a time, but you can't change your residence without applying for a new visa.
I left US for NL 10 years ago, and I can say I've enjoyed most of my time here. But now it's time to move on, and the world offers many exciting new cultures (and foods!) to enjoy.
The point of TFA (and Seneca's letter on which it is based) is not that you should just accept your Box of Daily Experience. It is that although you may have (and should have) control over most of what makes up your own Box of Daily Experience, there will always be a Box of Daily Experience. It is not arguing complacency about the contents, but is arguing for not trying to run from the basic fact of its existence.
Travel is rewarding if you're doing new things on the edge of your comfort zone.
If you're feeling existential anxiety, look into Philosophy. If you're too lazy to read, Alain de Botton has some insights, you can watch in video format:
I don’t really enjoy traveling. Feels like more trouble than it’s worth. I really enjoy my box. Playing with my family, watching TV, going to sporting events. I like reframing my more boring life as enjoying my box.
This was enjoyable to read, but I think the title paints travel in an overly dismal light. Perhaps a better title would be "Embrace the Box" or something of that nature. Even the author admits that travel is only a problem if you can't enjoy the present moment because you feel that you can't be happy until you travel (replace travel with money, having a relationship, etc and same idea).
Ultimately people should just do what they enjoy. For some that might entail a sedentary lifestyle, staying in one's hometown, marrying younger, taking a comfortable financially secure job, and/or living a more traditional life. For others it might entail moving around or traveling more, dating around more, pursuing more nontraditional hobbies and/or work, etc. There's nothing wrong with either so long as you're being honest with yourself, just do whatever you enjoy and don't feel like you need to fit into anyone's image of what an ideal lifestyle should look like.
A lot of happiness I think is a result of not having FOMO. For some people I think they need to actually live out their fantasy to realize that it's not the end all be all (I'm that type of person). At that point you either get depressed realizing that everything you ever wanted didn't make you happy and now you don't know where to search for happiness anymore, or you realize that you're not missing out on anything and there's no light at the end of the tunnel, so might as well make the best of life now.
I travel freeloader style, ie as cheaply as possible, atm I'm on 10$ a day in Egypt for the last couple of months, half of which is spent on a place to sleep. I walk, hitch and pay for public transport out of big cities, or if possible travel 3rd class with the locals.
My point is that , learning the language, meeting the people, seeing their reality, enjoying the weather (while Europe is stuck in the cold) , feeling lucky because someone stops to give me a lift is a total mind fuck and I mean that in a good way...
The inherent chaos of roughing it and having time to contemplate the beautiful vistas with no one around , the Milky way, the generosity or animosity is a reality check which helps clear the cobwebs from the mind and sharpens critical thought....
I agree with one poster that people don't take enough time to travel, I personally would like to connect more with and help locals in my specialities (music, gardening) and hate what the tourist industry has done, is doing to the environment (cheap jobs for the locals, wasted ressources on "short term" infrastructure, huge amounts of waste and garbage)
I personally think that to combat climat change it would be great to see swathes of the poorer European population, chill out and/or travel(for 2-3 months)in the empty tourist resorts or villages of the southern hemisphere, thereby hitting several birds with one stone : having experiences which lead to increased sensitivity and hopefully more empathy , not needing to pay the high prices for heating their homes , having a well deserved holiday as part of the "proletariat", hopefully sharing and learning to be more "open minded"
I'm not sure of the math but unless we are very lucky and CO2 sucking or free energy fusion technology has a huge breakthrough, the world will, is, burning up and the best solution would be to get as many of those who can afford democratically to stop work to do so, thereby creating a net CO2 reduction (ie work and all the energy consumption work entails + transport and supermarket logistics+ heating and useless paper advertising weekly supermarket discounts (-) travel by boat and cheap living) in warm countries ... we saw this with the advent of covid....
On a side note, reading HN is the best , it downloads fast and caches for offline reading...also I just came across a wonderful book called "Dancing with mosquitoes" by Theo Grutter , totally recommend.
I can confirm this in broad outline. I've been lucky enough to go on a couple open-ended road trips. I knew going in that it was unlikely to "fix my problems", but still entertained the hope that it would do something along those lines. It didn't. I was approximately the same idiot after as I was before.
Not that I don't want to do it again as soon as possible. There are, as many have mentioned here, other reasons to travel, and I do think the experience has made my life richer.
The key is to always be stimulating your mind with new experiences, new concepts, new surroundings, think through confusions, solve holes in your understanding, make something etc. etc..
Travel ticks some of those boxes so it does absolutely help the mind. You can tick some of the other boxes from home as well.
Life passes by really, really fast if you do the same thing and think the same way every single day. It will make you restless, anxious over time too because your mind really doesn't like that kind of confinement.
I can confirm this in a sense regarding what I heard when talking to other expats working and living abroad, they say: When you‘ve moved once or twice, you can‘t really stay put anymore and this apathy flows in regarding if and where to actually settle. It‘s interesting how serious this can get and you get a feeling something‘s not right in these people‘s minds. This post here shows a good way to go about it, amen.
You can embed growth, surprise, and serendipity into your box of daily (weekly) experience.
For example, watching your child grow up, making discoveries or seeing your work be implemented at scale, watching movies or reading books, or seeing your own skills develop in your hobby.
The point is to do things in life where you can encounter growth and discovery, so that your days/weeks can link together to form a bigger coherent picture of your life.
I always wondered if our passion for travel has deeper roots.
Maybe it comes from our ancestral need to move to greener pastures in search for food and better climate.
Sometimes we prefer go for long hikes, some others to stop and chill in enjoyable temperatures, close to water from sea, rivers or lakes.
All of this makes me think that deep inside we are at least partially still nomad creatures.
I disagree quite alot with the article, mostly because it asumes that it is necesary to hate your everyday routine and it can't be altered in any way. Living everyday life can be as creative as anything else, end a vacation in this case could just be one of the goals or rewards you aim towards and not just live for it.
here i must add, that a very big realization for me was, how important traveling or vacations (taking a break etc) actually is. It is absolutely necesary to have time off, and because of it brains will have the time to reflect on its own life, determine new goals or plans for the future. It gives you a place without everyday distractions and stimuluses. I always come back with new ideas, new goals and new energy for the future. And I look forward towards this future of everyday life.
edit: I started reading comments and noticed that a lot of people wrote the same thing. I might add that travelling doesn't necessary mean going somewhere exotic. It can also be a weekend roadtrip or a train journey to the countryside, which i believe is something everyone can afford.
>The drawback to this is that for most of us, traveling happens in the form of vacations. A vacation is designed to be an exciting respite we take to keep us incentivized to return back (...) But remember, since you are going to be staying here for a while, having fun with interesting people and seeing new sights are not reliable roadmaps for financial sustainability. And plus, all of your friends are busy in the daytime with work, and being a lone wanderer in the early afternoon is only fun for so long. So yup, it’s time to get yourself a job.
OK, so "travel" is not the cure. Money is, so that you don't need to work - and friends who also have money and do interesting stuff (not necessarily leisuring, they could do whatever, from politics and art to crafts, they're just not confined by 9-to-5 and bosses).
But perhaps even more problematic is the idea of a "cure for the mind". Because you can be even the latter and be miserable.
I generally have a very bad time when I travel, as I seem to be really unlucky. I've gone to Vegas and spent $72 on first aid and $9 on beer. Plus, I've broken down in cars that had no business breaking down twice. So, it certainly didn't reduce the stress. Add to that I often the person doing the logistics of travel and well I guess its not the cure.
I will say, there are places that calm my soul, like looking out on the North Dakota Badlands will make me happy for a long period afterwards. I don't know why or how, but it has done me a lot of good over the years. I do wonder if others have that travel place that just sets them right.
What's the difference between travel and reading then? Both make the mind go away. In the same argument one could say books are no good either, you should patiently mop the floor so your box is cleaner tomorrow.
Funny enough, my wife and I are looking to downsize so we can buy a second house in another part of the US because of exactly this. Basically one small house on the coast, one small house in the mountains. When things get too mundane and boring in one place we hop the the other. This only works if you have a remote job in the tech sector, and a wife who works contract jobs. I'm hoping this breaks the "box" syndrome for me even just a little.
I do plan to add some meditation practice after reading this article, its been on my "to do" list for a while.
I enjoy travel and transport because when on a trip between points A and B nothing can bother me or influence my trajectory. "I know I'll spend the next 5 hours on this train". This provides an oddly relaxing feeling of comfort and untouchability that is hard to get when you have many degrees of freedom available to you with many occasions of interference.
I can relate to the need for unique experiences... The older I get the more I feel like I need to travel. Especially when most of my work is done from home. I feel energized for weeks after I get back from a trip.
New experiences are good because they feed our neural networks with new input. A change of scenery can sometimes give us a needed fresh perspective to help us progress with life problems and to counter stagnation.
As an aside - is this type of blog a new genre? The short sentence, cartoon drawing life lesson kind of thing? I've been seeing it more and more I feel like.
One of the examples in the comic describes a guy that wants to live somewhere more exciting, so he moves there, only to discover that after a while everything has once again become routine and unsatisfying.
But I think some places are just generally better places to live than others, and these places lead to a greater sustained feeling of contentedness. I grew up in the southeast, and after visiting the Bay Area for the first time over a decade ago, I became determined to move there eventually.
So I did. And the initial “exciting new place” vibes did eventually fade somewhat, but... I found that I generally just enjoyed life more than I previously did. My seasonal affective disorder was more tolerable in the winter. The breathtaking scenery never got old. Tastier and healthier food. A job that fit my interests better. A culture that fit my personality better.
But with the birth of our daughter, my wife wanted to be closer to family, so we moved back to where we came from. And I really, really dislike living here. I have made every sort of plan to try to get back to CA eventually, or at least split my time in retirement between here and there (many years from now).
The five months of the year with a lack of sunshine and leafless trees are depressing. The people driving pickup trucks with Confederate flags mounted in the back are depressing. The endless chain restaurants and the fact that I can’t even find fresh garlic or basil is depressing. Knowing that my daughter will eventually go to a school nearby that never required masks and doesn’t believe vaccines are effective is depressing.
The premise of the article seems to be somewhat about the hedonic treadmill, and how it is not the box that you’re in that leads to discontent with life. But sometimes I think it is actually just the box that you’re in, and if you don’t like it, you urgently need to find a new box.
I have observed this mindset of "I need to move to <foo> - everything will be so much better then!"
I've never understood it. I have had a few friends follow through on this - after several jumps from continent to continent they are still not happy and are planning their next move to Canada or NZ or whatever, because this time it will be different! I was wrong all along! I really should have moved to Austin rather than Berlin then Tokyo then San Fran then Toronto then Auckland! This time will be one where I get the perfect job and find a partner! Ignoring that everyone "back home" has managed to be successful/happy despite the apparently unfixable "problems" with living in <foo>
tl;dr - IMO they're running away from problems rather than confronting them.
I was enjoying reading through and enjoying the artwork but needed to TL;DR it, scrolled down more towards the end and was bombarded by a large popup Ad on the right of the screen clipping about 35% of the text I was trying to read, close tab, no idea what the site was about, something about travel.
I really agree with the importance of having gratitude. It's easy to take for granted the miracle of life. Gratitude, as the article explains, can help you appreciate the wealth of experiences and opportunities available where you currently live.
I would add however that in some cases, travel can really enrich your life. You may even, if you have a certain personality and the financial means, find the most meaning in having a life of non stop travel, where your residence is, effectively, the planet Earth.
Travel can also help you discover places where you would prefer living. For example if you live on the West Coast, you may instead prefer jurisdictions with more law and order, where you're not having your personal belonging stolen on a frequent basis, and you're not forced to contend with mentally unstable drug addicts on a daily basis.
If you live in a cold climate, you may find you prefer the opposite, or vice versa.
You may find cities with a better job market, or less burdensome taxes.
You may find a country with a culture that better suits you, e.g. one that is more liberal, or a small town culture that is more friendly and personable.
Travel is key because, if you do it slowly enough with eyes open, it shows you what universal properties human societies tend to have in all their incarnations and just how beautiful nature, history, art and other things lying outside of the daily grind are. Importantly, particularly if you are young, it distances you from the familiar environment, society, family and friends, and thus releases your inhibitions and allows you to grow in new ways. Done right, travel is novel experience - definitely not endless flights and generic hotels. After your first foreign rendezvous, sunrise, sunset, new way of cooking a familiar ingredient, new instrument, sport, museum, language or revolution, "home" may just seem ... dull.
Travel is a set of unique experiences that form unique memories. Part of what’s addicting and pleasurable is that it helps slow down the perception of the passage of time, among many other positives.
It’s also self reinforcing in that when you think back, you tend to disproportionately remember travel vs other experiences.
There’s clearly a lot more benefits than that, but it certainly seems like a significant factor.