Traveling is a way to break the habit to enjoy the feeling of well-being that comes from exploration, discovery, and surprise. Before, taking a trip very far meant almost changing your life. It could last for months or even years because the time spent on the move was enormous. Today things are completely different. One can travel to any country in the world in less than two days and with a bit of luck, in less than a day.
When we travel, we learn, we change our viewpoint and we reintroduce ourselves. It is an invitation to get out of your routine and it’s allowing other facets of us to appear. Facets that may have fallen asleep through repetition and habit. De-contextualizing yourself activates your whole subjective world and brings up new challenges that require new skills and approaches different from those you typically use.
Travel immerses us in territories that we feel are less predictable, because, in these new environments, there are many contingency relationships that we do not know. This uncertainty can be the source of some nervousness, but also many more emotions and a heightened sense of adventure. Innate travelers need that adrenaline. Sporadic travelers are well-aware of these emotions that recall the happiness of being alive.
You come out of your relaxation zone when you travel. You allow yourself to expand the horizons of your world and life. But without realizing it, you introduce stimulation of your intellectual abilities, you become more creative and you develop many of your social and emotional skills.
Traveling is a source of creativity
They say you can always enjoy a trip three times over when you plan it, when you do it and when you remember it. All three steps require a great deal of creativity from you. You need it when choosing where you are going to travel. You need to be aware of what appeals to you, what you are looking for and what each destination can offer you.
When you travel, your creativity necessarily comes out of its reserve. You arrive in areas that you do not understand or that are not normal for you. You see yourself in the need to make multiple adaptations: to uses and customs, to food, to people’s daily lives, to the way you move around, etc. Also, if the trip is far, you will have to get used to other social interactions and a different language.
When you remember your trip, you will choose a way to organize and give meaning to those memories. You will associate them, you will recreate them and you will select the most significant aspects of the experience. You will understand what you have experienced.
All these processes, if taken as a whole, amount to complex intellectual activities. It’s almost like writing a book. Almost like designing, implementing, and assessing a project. Many of your intellectual and creative abilities are tested when you travel. So, after taking a trip, you will never be the same person again. The experience is much more stimulating and intense, and that is exactly why it may become quite pleasant.
Traveling makes you better
Traveling always exposes you to enriching experiences. A maxim says that “Fascism is overcome by reading and intolerance, by traveling.” A trip frees you from many prejudices, especially if you visit a place where you have to immerse yourself in a culture different from your culture of origin, or with which there is a great contrast with your usual reality. Understand that difference should not be perceived vertically, but horizontally: no culture is better or worse, they are simply different.
It has also been shown that people who take vacations, at least twice a year, have a lower risk of suffering from depression. Traveling is a great antidote to sadness because in one way or another it allows you to think and see everything differently. It’s like a bath of youth, which allows you to refresh your perspective of reality and yourself.
Traveling also helps to get in touch with yourself and with your most authentic feelings. Freed from your typical surroundings, these emotions and ideas that are frequently put in the background may more straightforwardly emerge, thanks to the specific context. You can see yourself, in some way, free from all the daily excuses and all the factors that force you to inhibit yourself.
There’s a difference between looking at life through the prism of everyday stress and doing it during one of those parentheses that travel allows. This is why traveling may make you better. Travel rejuvenates, energizes, and fills life with more color and magic. Never hesitate again: traveling necessarily takes you somewhere.