Ten Things I Learned from Two Years of Travel

Vinicunca, Peru

It’s been two years since I left Brooklyn with a backpack the weight of a short bulky man. I started in 2015 in Colombia and have ended, for now, with Japan. In that time I have been asked some toughies - “What's your favorite country?", "Is everywhere dangerous?", "Is this your life now?” and I have drawn a lot of premature conclusions. Now I have real ones to share.

Here are ten things I learned from traveling:

Langkawi, Malaysia

1. You Can't Tick Off a Place
You can’t step in the same river twice, you can’t experience the same Barcelona twice. Places and people are constantly changing. Each time you go somewhere your perspective is new and so are half the shops in the town. Even the sunsets change everyday. If you’re going to tick places off a list, you should also be ticking off the year you went and the stage of life you were in. Berlin in the 70s is not the Berlin of 2017, and going as an 18 year old is not the same as going as a 40 year old.

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

2. Make a Mistake Everyday
My boyfriend and I had a rule this year that we had to make one mistake a day. Expecting a mistake made our errors seem like a natural and beautiful aspect of travel instead of proof that we are scatterbrained foreigners. We’d pay the cashier with the wrong currency, run out of fuel on yet another motorbike without a working fuel gauge, or order chicken cartilage for dinner and simply say, "we were due for a mistake."

Vang Vieng, Laos

3. Your Country is the Other Family You Didn’t Choose
Having a country is like having parents: you do not choose where you are born or how you are raised. Maybe your country has the means to make sure you come into the world with fully formed arms and legs, maybe not. People can leave their families, but it’s a lot harder to shake your nationality.

Balboa, Panama

4. Spelling is Relative 
My boyfriend’s name is Yorckh. If you don’t know how to pronounce it, I’ve been there. And I’ve been a dick about it. I hinted to Yorckh that maybe the spelling didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I thought that your name and the way you spell it says something about you because I grew up in the USA where we place value on people’s adherence to syntax. But now I’ve been to Laos where babies aren’t named until they’ve been around for three months. I’ve met people in Indonesia who don’t know their ages and people in Colombia who, when I ask them which way to spell something, say “either way is right.” Either way is right? That’s not a bad way to think.

El Cajas, Ecuador

5. Can’t Travel That Far
When Yorckh and I lived together in an apartment in Mexico, I told him that I was messy because there were no shelves. In a hostel room, I told him the mess was because we were leaving in a week. When I was messy at my Grandma’s, I said I had jetlag. The truth is that I am messy. The same goes for pretty much every other aspect of my life. Even when I am traveling I’ll think, “I bet it’d be different if I went to Mongolia.” As if Mongolia will solve money worry or make me more centered. Relocating is impactful but it doesn’t do the inner work for you.

Kasi, Laos

6. Couple v. Solo Travel

Traveling solo was the best thing I ever did until I traveled with my boyfriend. It’s an uncomfortable truth. Couple traveling, contrary to what I imagined before doing it, is bananas easy and emotionally stabilizing. You have someone you love looking at sitting in front of you literally all the time.You have a mobile home. Ideally, solo travel would also feel that way but it’s hard to feel one hundred percent like yourself when you have no one to be yourself with. That is its own challenge and gift. When I got to be solo and selfish I discovered where I put my energy and what makes me happy. Now that I’m compromising with someone else I have no rose-colored glasses about all the cool things I’d be doing without this ball and chain. I was excited to discover sunsets with myriad strangers and now I’m grateful to collect a series of sunsets with one buddy.

Ubud, Indonesia

7. Everyday I’m Robbing Myself
I’ve realized that the ol’ “you can’t get out of your own way” phrase is a gracious way of saying that we rob ourselves. When I was worried about my work schedule in Ubud I stopped seeing the rice paddy fields. I am not tasting my al pastor tacos if I’m thinking about their price. As Deepak Chopra recently told me via Oprah, every time I am not fully present with Yorckh that is a moment of his life I am missing. I think of it as a reminder that I am handed one hundred gifts everyday and if I am intentional I could actually open some of them up. Of course travel isn’t the only time that my mind zones out, but it’s a little more obvious when my mental rant is preventing me from seeing Balinese temples.

Medellin, Colombia

8. Countries Are People
What is my favorite country? Let me ask you a similar question: Who is your favorite human? Countries are like people: they’re all the same and each one is unique. It is hard to say which is better or worse, it is just a matter of which one you gel with at each point in your life. That being said, Mexico/Malaysia and Oprah.

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico

9. Imports and Exports
As long as I am saying countries are people, a country can’t only import and neither can people. Traveling means you are constantly importing cultures, histories, and landscapes into your brain. There is not a lot of exporting the ideas from your brain into the world. I've learned I need a balance of what information I’m bringing in and what creativity I’m letting out. I know when I’ve been importing too much into myself because I feel tired and unmotivated. That’s travel burn out. I know when I’ve been exporting too much because I feel resentful and self-righteous. That’s when I need to get out of town.

Ometepe, Nicaragua

10. Leave to Come Back

I am from a suburb. I’ve often thought that if a large group of people came in and started changing the whole town, there’d be nothing to protect. But when I came back to this ‘burb this year, I saw its americana flavor. I see how big the trucks are, how much space there is between each building, and how white people look as they age. If getting to know other countries does not interest you, travel is worth it simply to come home and see your own country in its global context.