to everyone who is jealous of my travels: find your passion

When I was seventeen, I took my first international trip by myself. Never mind that it was a trip with forty other classmates and we were going to Guatemala for a mission trip. It was my first time away without my family and it was so exciting. I didn’t find my passion on that trip. As much as I’m sure my Catholic high school teachers wanted me to realise a “vocation,” no one ever said, “hey, you never know, you might find your passion out here volunteering.”

A few months or so after that, my parents took us – me and my two brothers – to Ireland for the first time. I was a bratty teenager relegated to the backseat of a tiny rental car, still under the legal drinking age in Ireland, and continually annoyed by the sibling bickering that I had to deal with.

I don’t think it was in Ireland that I realized my passion for travel; certainly it wasn’t that trip to Ireland. But I do think I realized that I had a passion for something. History, maybe, or art. Cultures, even, and social interactions.

Now, almost fourteen years after that trip to Ireland, almost five years since I changed trajectory in my life, and one year since leaving the States for New Zealand, I have found a way to put this into words.

I am the only person in my immediate family that studied abroad in university. Of the seventeen cousins that make up the two sides of my family, only four of us studied abroad. Four are still in high school and two are in university; it is my goal to convince them that travelling is the best thing they could do with their life. Travel led me to my passion. I have a BFA in Interior Design and a M.Lit in Classics. I was convinced my passion was architecture and design. Never mind that I’m a terrible artist.

But through travel, I met people and did things that made me realise… my passion is rooted in a desire to always be moving. My passion is learning – about new cultures, about geography, about people, about food. My passion is history – of new places and of old places. Don’t follow the dream, follow your dream – this is what I want to say to everyone who has ever told me that they are jealous of my travels.

Let me explain

Travel is hard. It forces us to confront issues formerly unbeknownst to us- whether they be inner conflicts or something we learn about how we deal with external matters. But this is precisely why travelling is so important, especially in this day and age where our world is quickly becoming borderless.. I mean this in the sense of the concept of global citizens. People who were born in one country, met someone from another, and now live in a third. People who move for work and never set down roots in one country or culture. Children will begin to grow up as third culture kids, a term now reserved for the children of diplomats and other mobile families. This will become the norm.

So travel is hard because it takes what we thought we knew and turns it on its head. It tells us, “you think you know about this, but you have no idea.” Simple things, like navigating city streets, become ultra-difficult in a foreign place. Grocery shopping in another language becomes a chore.

But travel is also hard because it just bloody is.

It’s f***ing difficult, I can tell you that firsthand. Eleven to twenty hour bus rides are common, having to carry your life on your back is common. It’s normal to take your life to the toilet with you because you have no one to watch your stuff in a crowded bus station while you wait with twenty other backpackers for the next bus to Somewhere.

Sleeping in airports will be common. You’ll have a five am flight and not want to pay for a hostel the night before, so you’ll make friends with the hostel workers and sit in the office with them until you need to catch the tube to Stanstead. Or you’ll catch the last metro from Madrid’s city centre to the airport and sit with your best friend while simultaneously trying to catch the eye of the cute Spanish security guard. Or you’ll land in London at midnight on a flight from Norway and find a cozy settee at the coffee shop to sleep on, your bag at your feet and your personal stuff under your head, before going back through security at seven am.

You’ll deal with people in your hostel room that snore like a freight train. With stolen food from your box in the hostel kitchen. Food poisoning from that vendor on the street corner. Lost property, bad directions, scams, and more.

It sounds awful

It’s not.

Travel is also expensive. I get this. Despite the many articles out there about how you can travel on a dime, you will spend money. Since I began by writing this post to a younger audience, to someone in school, let me tell you this. The US government literally GIVES universities federal money to use for students to travel abroad. If you are a uni student, and want to spend a semester overseas, stop into your study abroad office – every uni has one – and ask about the opportunities. You may not get a full ride, but you might get a few thousand dollars toward your experience. Parents, urge your children to do this. Even one semester abroad can lead to eye-opening experiences and new friends from around the globe. I can’t count on my two hands the number of countries that my close circle of friends reside in.

(If you are lucky enough to be a uni student from Europe, then your uni is likely free or near enough to free, and you can study abroad within the EU for almost next to nothing. Then again, if you are a European student reading this blog, you probably already travel!)

Broke travelling builds character, just as the scars that you’ll from falling off a bicycle on a dirt road build character.

Travel will teach you so much about yourself. You will learn how you adapt to new situations. You will learn how you interact with new people- especially people who do not speak your language. You will learn how to adapt to being a country where English is not the native language. You might even learn a new language.

But above all of this, you will find your passion.

Your passion might not be travelling. It may have nothing to do with travel. But every spot on this globe has something to offer you in the way of your passion; if anything it might just tell you what your passion isn’t.

Find your passion

A student who travels to London to take a semester business course may find instead that he is drawn to law, or anthropology. Someone who spends a year in Italy for architecture may instead find that she prefers history, or cooking. A student who travels on summer holidays may slowly find that instead of touring aimlessly, she instead seeks out places to volunteer. Becomes involved with refugees, with building houses in remote African villages. Instead of applying for a job after graduation, she might apply instead for the Peace Corps. She might inspire someone else to apply for the Peace Corps. She might meet her European husband while working for the Peace Corps, or the State Department, or the Foreign Service. Her kids might grow up in the Philippines, in South Africa, in the Arctic.

Or she might not. She might spend her summers in Europe, seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, the Berlin Wall and Dachau, The Colosseum and the Leaning Tower. And she might return home to her college sweetheart, settle into a small house, relocate to a larger one when she has her first child, buy a bigger car when she has a second.

This is what I mean when I say, “find your passion.” Discover what you truly care about. The answer might surprise you.

Travelling through Southeast Asia or Central America, you might find that you love scuba diving. You could learn to sail. Even a child who grows up in the middle of a landlocked country can find their passion on the water.

There IS no right or wrong. Everyone will make their own decisions. And we can all be passionate about those we have made. But what is a life if not lived passionately?

I urge you to travel, to confront your fears, to explore your boundaries.

Travel when you have money, and when you don’t. Travel when you have time, and when you don’t. Travel when you are confident, and when you are not. Travel when you are happy, and when you are not.

The people you meet, the things you do, the culture and the music you experience, the museums you visit, and the strange foods that you try… they might not change your life’s direction.

But I can guarantee you that they will change at least one thread in the tapestry that is your life.

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