Why do we love to travel? Such a simple question. Yet, for us, the reasons behind our desire to travel the world are numerous, vastly dynamic, and encompass every aspect of our lives. In short, traveling in its purest form is healthy for all aspects of our well-being, including mental, physical, emotional, & spiritual.
To begin, we are in love with the rest of the world – with places we’ve already experienced and countries we have yet to explore. We want to see, to do, to be. This leads us, as many things do, to the priorities of life.
As the years have passed, and our individual personalities have both grown and solidified, our priorities have become clear. After copious amounts of test and trial, this is what we’ve learned: money, while a necessary evil, comes and goes. The things that make life worthwhile are people and experiences. We have been blessed in both categories, but there is so much more that the world has to offer.
Know Thyself:
Traveling for us is not trivial – it is vital to our personalities and to the lives we wish to create. The sheer depth of the countless possibilities that are available to us as we travel intrigue us and entice us to continue with the adventurous lifestyle we have chosen. Our desire to explore the world and experience new cultures (also known as Wanderlust) is a driving force that propels us forward every day. Time has not diminished this desire in the least.
So we have set out, seeking any new horizon that calls to us. It’s not only the destinations that interest us, it is the ability to pull out a map (yes, an actual physical map – we’re old school like that :D), look over the different options, and have a conversation about which country we should try next. Yet we couldn’t have come to this point if we had not taken the time to learn who we really are, and what it is that we really want out of this life.
After a great deal of deliberation, we came to the inescapable conclusion that traveling was the foundation on which we needed to build in order to be truly happy.
To Being Better – The New and Improved Us:
We also realize that it’s time for us to evolve into better versions of ourselves. Luckily for us, the most ultimate way to ensure this is to travel.
We are enchanted with seeing new places, meeting new people, having new experiences, all of which throw us out of our comfort zone, demand a new way of thinking, and entice us with all the possibilities the world has to offer.
Every time we travel, our hope and faith in people (which our somewhat cynical and highly realistic selves ensures is virtually non-existent) is renewed. We’re not delusional, we’re fully aware that there are awful people the world over. But, the more we explore, the more we realize just how very similar we all are and that goodness can take so many more forms than we ever thought was possible. Every time, knowledge such as this refreshes us, opens our minds to new ideas, and fills us with wonder.
And, while it may sound odd, every time we travel we find a little more of our souls. We can feel the experiences change us, making us more accepting and better able to handle all the situations of life. As we have come to find, no matter how much you plan, something always happens. Traveling gives us elasticity and adaptability. It allows us to accept new circumstances and thus easily find a solution to any dilemma. With this knowledge comes stability and peace, ensuring that less fear will dominate our lives.
Change is Healthy:
One truth of life is that change is healthy. Stay in one place, one situation involving the same people, the same conditions, and you grow stale. With no change or movement, without living in a way that calls to your soul (in whatever way that may be), you start to fade, to diminish, to rot from the inside out. And then, before you know it, you’re a shadow of who you once were. There’s no fire, no passion, no desire to be better, to do better.
This sad depiction describes both of us before we decided to leave the United States to travel the world indefinitely.
While we have always traveled, and our journeys have encompassed more and more of the world as we’ve grown older, it wasn’t until our 30th year that we knew something else had to be done. It was at this time that a seemingly insane idea took root: that we could create a life where traveling and working abroad were harmoniously combined. This idea galvanized us forward into a completely new endeavor, one we embrace with open arms. In the end, we truly seized traveling as a lifestyle (see The Endeavor!).
Balance is Key:
Another lesson that has been instrumental in our lives is the fact that balance is key! This sentence deserves the exclamation mark attached to it for the very reason that it has been so pivotal to us. Those times when we have found ourselves at our most unhappy were directly related to our lives being completely unbalanced. We were not enjoying the very things that make life worth living – we barely saw our friends and family, didn’t meet any new people or have any fresh experiences to revitalize our souls, and so on. In truth, we were stuck in a repetitive cycle of boring sameness and it was sucking us dry of all creativity. We were in deep survival mode but why? We shouldn’t need to survive our lives, we should marvel at the fact that we get to live them in the first place. Traveling enables us to acquire the type of balanced lifestyle that we really want.
For the Cultures:
As Humanities majors in college, we know that every culture is beautiful. Each place is distinct and has its own unique flavor, a fact that we love. And so we travel: admiring the art, architecture, history, language, religion, societal customs, and simply appreciating all the beauty (both man-made and not) that exists in this world.
There are so many more reasons, but this article at least gives a basic overview of why traveling has become the very foundation of our lives. In the end, we are now, as we have always been, women of the world! 😀