Traveling will blow your mind. After a while, you will start to think that you know what’s going on on this planet. Buses have bus routes and bus stops. Taxis don’t. Watermelons are red inside. Light bulbs unscrew. Swans are white.
But traveling will change all that.
In Ecuador, I encountered buses that had routes but no set stops and just stopped whenever there was someone along the route who wanted to be picked up. In Nicaragua, I encountered taxis that served small communities like buses—they had set routes and stops and the driver would hold his hand outside the window and indicate with his fingers how many seats were available inside. In China, I learned that you can cut open a watermelon and be greeted with yellow inside instead of red inside. In Scotland, I tried to unscrew a light bulb but couldn’t, because it worked like a child-proof pill bottle—you had to press it in and then unscrew. In Australia, swans are black.
The world is different from how you think it is. Go find out how.
The world is more extreme than you think it is. It’s bigger and smaller and colder and hotter than you think it is. Looking through a clear ocean underwater made me feel like I was in outer space. I have been shivering and sunburning at the same time. It was so windy in Nicaragua that I failed to salt my food on my first attempt.
You will meet people who do things differently from you and think differently about things.
My Australian friends who have been to the US all say, “What’s the deal with all the 4-way stops?” They want to know why they have to stop at every corner when they’re driving because in Australia, they don’t. They have roundabouts, where you have to stop only if there’s another car already on the roundabout that you have to give way to. In America, we put our subway ticket into a gate which then opens if we have a valid ticket. In Japan, they leave all the gates open and they close them only if you fail to put in a valid ticket, preventing you from passing through. In America, our traffic lights go from green to yellow to red. In Europe, they go from green to yellow to red and then to a fourth state, which is red with yellow, which means that the light is about to turn green. In Nicaragua, people point with their lips instead of their fingers. In China, they count to ten on one hand.
Go discover something that’s completely new to you.
A joy of traveling is discovering things that you never knew existed. If you like ordering the appetizer sampler plate at home, then you will love traveling. You haven’t even tried every food in the supermarket. Can you imagine having eaten only apples and bananas, and never having tasted an orange? There are fruits that you have never tasted. Guanábana, zapote, and uchuva. There are words for those fruits in English but the words aren’t “apple”, “banana”, or “orange” and if you’ve never tasted them, you should. They are delicious.
There are also combinations of things that you have never tried. There are places where they put cheese in their hot chocolate. I thought that my Tibetan-German friend was playing a joke on me when she said that in Germany they drink beer with bananas in it. Until she drank one with me.
Collect the dots.
Traveling also has the practical benefit of equipping you to be more creative. Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” Creativity is connecting the dots. But before you can connect the dots, you must collect the dots. Traveling is a great place to collect some dots. And it will remind you that you’re also allowed to make your own dots. You can connect them with squiggly lines or straight ones. Your pen color can be any color of the rainbow. Traveling will train you to have new eyes, always. It will make your normal seem less normal and inspire you to try new things and to do things differently.
It can be hard to think outside of the box. But when you travel, you will find that other people have already done it for you. In Scotland, I saw a salt shaker that you didn’t have to shake because it was more like a salt drizzler. Also in Scotland, I drove on a road that had only one lane for both directions of traffic. Instead of building an entire lane for the other direction of traffic, they had built a lot of places that you could turn out and let someone coming from the opposite direction pass. In China, I was once served hot noodles to go that were placed directly into a plastic takeout bag rather than into a box that was then put into a bag. In America, we eat with forks and knives. In China, they eat with two sticks. In India, they often eat with their hands. What will they think of next? What will you think of next?
No one else can travel for you. I would love to be able to tell you what’s around the corner. But the world has no corners. You will have to go around and see for yourself.
Spend some of your time and money on traveling. You won’t ask to have your time or your money back.
Like it? Share it. Thanks!