Why we travel

“If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey” - Art of the Pilgrimage

Being a world-travelling spiritual warrior is somewhat of a rite of passage. Many of those privileged enough, on graduating high school or college, traipse off on one-way tickets with eyes and hearts wide open. Whether it’s Burning Man or a Contiki tour, we shed our familiar surroundings in favour of bedbug-infested backpackers. If we're lucky we have people around us that encourage this: people older and wiser than us, who understand that the best way to avoid getting lost is, actually, by getting lost.

We sip kombucha and attend spiritual festivals, the kind where eye contact with strangers is liberal and clothing is optional. We downward dog our way through cities, dance barefoot on beaches, hashtagging experiences with acronyms like

yolo

wanderlust

global nomad

We are “finding ourselves.” Figuring out, at the cusp of adulthood, who we are and what we want to do. The idea hinges on two assumptions: the first being that we have lost ourselves in the first place. The second, that we can find ourselves on far away shores. But throughout all this hugging and komboyah and insta-friendships, are we actually finding what we’re searching for?

The desire to travel dates right back to our nomadic ancestors, who moved around to suit conditions. If a place was too wet, or dry, or if resources were too scarce, we moved on.

Just as our ancestors moved around to solve external problems, so too did they travel to resolve inner questions. A rite of passage is a ceremony or event marking the transition of an individual from one role to another. In some Native American cultures, young males entering adulthood would embark on vision quests in the desert. They fasted and requested visions and dreams that would provide answers for what they should do in life, how they could best serve their community, and how they can best serve their people. They then brought back these insights for elders to interpret.

Although embarking on official rites of passage may be losing popularity in the modern world, its echoes remain in the gap years and contiki tours of our generation. The desire to travel, either physically or metaphorically, is embedded deep within us. Adolescents in the cusp of adulthood travel to answer questions like: What should I do with my life? Should I go to university? Should I stay in my home town? Whether aware of it or not, they also travel to answer deeper questions. Who am I? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life?

These questions carry great weight, and with weight comes responsibility. The paradox is, there are many who use travel as a means to escape this responsibility. Travel can become a drug to avoid real commitment, whether it be a job or relationship. Travel becomes less about finding yourself and more about losing yourself. This is what we find with social media and modern technology, which were created to connect people but has caused the opposite.

Years ago, I was at a rooftop bar at a Backpackers in Turkey when I heard two American girls talk about their travels.

“So I went to Paris, and I got soooo wasted,” one of them said, raising her voice over the pop music blaring out of the loudspeaker.

“Ugh me tooooo,” her companion echoed, and they began comparing notes about the nightclubs they had visited.

“Then I went to London, and I got suuuuch a hangover."

The rest of the conversation continued much the same, with the theme of getting drunk in different countries.

When countries become check boxes on a bucket list, we lose the heart of travel. And when sharing our travelling insights consists of Facebook updates and Instagram photos, are we really enriching the community?

The truth is, it’s easier to dance barefoot and howl at the moon than to dig deep into yourself until you unravel. It's easier to explore shallow pools, skimming mere surfaces of the places that you see, the people that you meet, maintaining the role as a "traveller" here only temporarily. This is what we do. Not just while travelling.

The meaning of travel is to find what has been lost. To search to stop searching. To make familiar the unfamiliar. To dig deep inside yourself until you unravel. To make peace with the parts that you find, and to bring back the gifts to share with those around you.

And to make a home - somewhere familiar or unfamiliar, within another person, or within yourself.