This needs to be said so badly that I’m just going to get right to it:
Never pretend that traveling makes you a better person.
It doesn’t. This sounds bad, but some of the meanest, cruelest, most-negative, and most-self-absorbed human beings I’ve ever met were “fellow travelers” I met on the open road.
Sure, I’ve met some amazing lifelong friends while traveling… but I’ve also met plenty in my home country as well. And let’s not pretend that every traveler you meet is a smart, sophisticated, and worldly person just because they have more stamps on their passports than you.
“Well, won’t there tend to be more open-minded travelers?”
When I was in university, I made a lot of friends in the “Study Abroad” program. The idea was that students from all over the world would come to UCSD, study, learn the culture, and — supposedly — return home with new experiences and an open-mind. Yet me and a couple of international friends couldn’t help but notice that countrymen always stuck with countrymen — Italians with Italians. Taiwanese with Taiwanese. Mexicans with Mexicans.
So why leave in the first place?
Why leave if you’re not going to make a concerted effort to branch out and meet new people from different cultures? (To party, maybe? If so, there’s nothing wrong with that — but they’ve just admitted that traveling won’t make them a better person.) As Jesus taught:
If you only greet your brothers, what more are you doing that others?
Same when I was teaching abroad in South Korea: there were plenty of close-minded Westerners who couldn’t wait for an opportunity to pounce on the Korean way-of-life while imposing how great their particular culture was.
That’s the opposite of open-minded.
“Well, how can you NOT change while traveling if everything’s so new and different?”
“We see as we are,” said the Buddha.
New streets, new signs, new faces — everything around you is new. But YOU aren’t. Thus, you will respond (or react) to your new environment with the same exact paradigms you held onto before you left. Put in a different way, if your eyeglasses have a green tint, everything will look green no matter where you go.
The next time your friend tells you tales from their travels (or complains about it), listen with a grain of salt because they can only interpret everything that happened from their Rolodex of stored reactions, teachings, memories, etc.
Also, how can you truly expect to change when you are constantly distracted with the freshness of your environment. Hell, I think you have a better chance of “changing” in solitary confinement — there, all your external freedoms and possessions would be stripped away, leaving nothing left but your soul.
Everywhere is nowhere.
— Seneca
“Well, what if I go traveling to ‘find myself?'”
Save yourself the trip because you won’t. But that’s not just me talking — that’s from thousands of years of teachings and lessons from philosophers and holy people.
Change happens from within, not from outside. And if you can’t “find yourself” at home, it won’t be any easier with the stresses, anxiety, challenges, and aggravators that characterize world, fucking, travel. Sure, you might get a euphoric “high” from visiting this faraway, exotic places and adopting their religion, culture, or whatever…
…hell, you might even think you’ve changed!
But once you get back home, you’ll be same person.
Those who cross the sea change the sky above them, but not their souls.
— Horace
“Who the fuck are you, then?”
I’m just a regular-ass dude who made these mistakes, too.
I erroneously thought that, by moving to South Korea, I could avoid the traumatic shitstorm of my parents. Yet nothing really changed except I put a huge gap between us and they shifted all their arguments over email. Once I got back, it was as if they made a fine, red wine while I was gone with all their baggage and aged it perfectly in oak barrels.
Then, I thought I could become a better person. (I didn’t.)
But do you want to know what really made a difference in my life and helped me become “better?” Not traveling — no, no, no…
It was reading books, socializing with good people, and taking more risks.
In other words, it was the combination of knowledge, a strong support group, and ACTION.
That’s what makes you a better person.
Travel because you want to see a new land and explore a new culture. Travel because you want to taste new foods, learn a different history, and speak a new language. Travel because you want to know more about your fellow man. Not because you want to “become a better person.” Not because you want to “change.” And definitely not because you think it’ll “make you more open-minded.”
But, you know, to be able to see those things while traveling means you need to be open-minded and kind before you leave. Hmm…
…maybe you were already a “better person” after all.
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