The Empowerment of Travel

I was pretty freaked out before travelling on my own. It was my first time taking a plane by myself, and my first time staying in a hostel. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I thought that I had done all of the preparation that I could. All that was left was to see what would happen.

And it ended up being fine! I did good! Not everything was perfect, obviously things go wrong when you travel, but I dealt with it well and it all turned out ok.

It was a huge confidence boost, because here I am, really and truly out on my own, and managing to deal with everything. And it was all so much easier than I expected. You think that without someone else, that little safety net of having a second opinion, that you would fall apart somewhere and get hopelessly derailed. But really, all of life is preparation for doing things like this. And if something goes wrong, there is always a reasonable solution that is logical. It isn’t that hard to figure out where you’re going on a foreign subway system, and strangers are usually helpful and can point you in the right direction.

Another aspect of it is the fact that I was backpacking for a weekend. You always think “oh I need to bring this with me, and that’s essential it has to come too” but when it comes down to it, you really don’t need any of those things. You can literally stuff the 5-6 most important things in a bag, and just get up and go anywhere. That realization is pretty powerful, because after that you don’t have an excuse to not be travelling wherever you want. It opens so many doors.

So those are realizations that I came to, but I can’t just tell you and you’ll understand them, you have to go out and experience it for yourself to really internalize it. So go, get up and out that door! It doesn’t have to be anywhere special, take the bus to the next town over and stay a night. It’s empowering and such a nice change from the everyday.

Haha, I think I’ve got the travel bug now. Here we go!