Why I want to travel the world

For the last ten years, I’ve wanted to travel the world. It took me a while to get there, but after some focused choices and concerted effort, I made it! And as I’ve been expanding my creative and personal practices while exploring around the world, I’ve been learning a few things. I thought I’d share why I wanted to travel in the first place.

I love to travel for a few reasons. One is that seeing new people and places for myself gives me the chance to make my own person map of them. It makes life richer. I’ve always been a big reader, and the more I travel, the more I can truly relate the people and places I read about. Same with watching shows. I recently watched Heartstopper, and at the end of the show, two characters go to a town outside London. And I was like, “I know that! That’s Brighton!” because I’d just been there visiting a friend. I appreciate having my own personal maps of these far-away places (that now feel less far away.)

I travel because it gives me the opportunity to see my friends and make new ones! We’re in a digital society where we can meet people online from all parts of the world. I’ve also lived in many different places. This means I’ve got friends across continents, and if I didn’t travel, I’d never get to see them. While keeping in touch digitally works decently (I love me a good voice note), I find that getting to really hug someone every once in a while is a great way to keep the relationship going strong.

Another reason to travel is that it gets us out of the fog of familiarity. When we put ourselves into an unfamiliar situation, we are more aware of the world around us. We can’t just go through the motions, because none of them are habitual anymore. We’re on new streets, taking new paths, eating new foods. It’s not for everyone, but if it’s something you enjoy, it can be a great way to push your personal growth. Maybe you’re used to cooking every day, but now you have to go to strange stores to get unfamiliar ingredients. It makes you explore new paths and question your processes. Maybe you’ll find a new way to do something. Maybe you’ll find a new way to be.

Personal growth is just a learning path, like any other course we’d learn, like math or science. But instead of trying to learn about an external body of knowledge, we’re trying to learn about our internal workings. Maybe we’re trying to learn how to be a better human or how to be happy.

There are many theories about how we learn best, but one that informs the way I view the world is this idea of “zones of proximal development”, also popularized by Tom Senninger as “learning zones.” The idea is that there is a circle of the things you know, then a circle of things you could learn with some support, then a circle of things that are too far of a stretch and you can’t do yet.

I think traveling helps us get into these positions outside our comfort zone, but if we set ourselves up right, we’re still within the circle of things we can learn with support. So it can give us new opportunities to set ourselves up on our life-long learning path.

Overall, I want to explore the world. Whether I’m exploring the internal workings of my mind, trying to understand and reshape the way I experience the world, or exploring new cities or countries in the physical world, trying to understand the varied ways humans exist on this planet, I want to see things from new perspectives. It feeds my creative practices, my growth practices, and my soul as a human. I believe there are lots of paths to finding this, and travel is just one of them. We each find our own path that works for us and our life situations. This is the one that works for me, in this iteration of my life today. 💜

Leave a comment telling me if you travel, and if so, why. I’d love to learn from you.

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