How Traveling Abroad in Your Twenties Will Ruin Your Life
medium.com
medium.com
I'll start with an account I read at a merchant sailor's museum. When the sailors retire, they prefer to live with other sailors, because of differences in worldview between sailors and non-sailors. In conversation the latter might say "You talk about going to Buenos Aires as if it were a trip to the grocery store." The sailors feel out of place, because of the implicit otherness.
Now for a personal account, I used to do a lot of tango. (Co-incidentally) Buenos Aires is the birthplace and many will say still the heart of tango. Some people will visit Buenos Aires, take private or intensive lessons, and come back name dropping the studios, and milongas, and teachers they met, and try to pass on the lessons they learned. It can come across as "In BsAs they do things DIFFERENT and BETTER", with a snobbish and arrogant attitude.
Why do I say this is 'egocentric'? I'll highlight and explain key quotes:
> "Because travel has a way of messing with you and you’re too impressionable in your twenties."
This is humblebragging, since the author ends with how personally transformative and addictive travel is. But setting that aside, some people travel overseas when they are under twenty. As a kid we lived in Ecuador for a few years. My sister traveled in France and in Bolivia in a couple summers when she was in her teens, and we did family trips to the Bahamas, Ecuador, and Peru. Are people under 20 somehow not impressionable enough? Or does it take a truly insular life until adulthood to fully appreciate the multi-cultural experience? Or perhaps the best way to build up 'armor' against culture shock is to get it in small doses while young?
> "Wait until your thirties or forties or fifties or later because most people are set in their ways by then."
Well isn't that a load of ageist manure. Yet it's also oddly compatible with the line "You’ll spend your entire life traveling." This sounds like the author is set in the ways established as a 20-something - just like author says that occurs with almost everyone else.
> "First of all, the person who you were before you traveled no longer exists."
Not surprising as you can never set foot in the same river twice. Lots of people have transformative experiences, including obvious ones like college, military, marriage, and parenthood, or less obvious ones like Timothy Leary's famous use of LSD at the age of 40, or learning to dance tango.
But those obvious ones are boring, run-of-the-mill life changing experiences, down to the point of stereotype. "Yes, you have the most beautiful baby in the world and I love to see the dozens of pictures you post on Facebook every day." "No, I didn't know that poop comes in so many different colors."
When you have a baby, or a long-term partner, you start to wonder “Do I want to work 60+ hour weeks and have barely any vacation time?”. When you have teenagers you start to wonder “How come young people in other countries aren’t crippled with student loan debt?” So it's not like these thoughts are special to 20-somethings with international travel experience under their belt.
On the flip side, are these traveling 20-somethings thinking "Why doesn't the US have paid parental leave for both parents?" or "Why is the cost of medical care and elder care in the US so expensive?" Likely, no. But it's something a traveling 30-something or 40-something is more likely to be thinking about.
> "Your friends and family and peers — they won’t understand. In fact, they don’t really care that you’ve just gone through this transformative journey."
The thing is, many of those friends, etc. have also had transformative journey. The parents - the ones who 'will listen to your tales for a few minutes' - have certainly had a transformative experience, just due to being parents.
But excepting Timothy Leary, or a few others, relating these transformations to others who haven't had a similar experience is boring.
The socially acceptable solution is tit-for-tat. If you want to spend 20 minutes talking about firewalking on the beach in Thailand, then you have to listen appreciatively to your friend talk excitedly for 20 minutes about their child's newest accomplishments, or the differences between L.A. style and New York style salsa.
Now, I recognize that this written for 20-somethings who feel a bit of a reverse culture shock coming home. But it's addresses the culture shock by suggesting the reader's unique experiences are somehow better than the unique transformations of everyone else. This is a path towards snobbish that many, including myself, find off-putting. If that snobbishness comes through when relating one's personal experiences, then it's not surprising that friends and family won't even put up with a tit-for-tat exchange.
First off, the description of the blog is "The Savvy Backpacker is the ultimate guide for budget backpackers who want honest, in-depth, and independent travel advice for their backpacking trip in Europe." Clearly this blog is meant to be a future destination for travelers.
> "Because travel has a way of messing with you and you’re too impressionable in your twenties."
> "Wait until your thirties or forties or fifties or later because most people are set in their ways by then."
> "First of all, the person who you were before you traveled no longer exists."
> "Your friends and family and peers — they won’t understand. In fact, they don’t really care that you’ve just gone through this transformative journey."
All of these quotes are so absurd that they are meant to spur on the adventurous rebel. This is in the same way that a child would want to do something more when her parents tell her not to do something.
So, I would interpret this piece a bit more lightly. The author seems that he would agree with your views on the benefits of travel.
The point of the article is actually to argue that waiting until your 30s and 40s is too late, because you will be too old to change. Do it in your 20s, because you will still have a chance to change for the better. The following are all very worthwhile questions:
> “Do I want to work 60+ hour weeks and have barely any vacation time?”
> “Is there more to life than work?”
> “How come young people in other countries aren’t crippled with student loan debt?”
> “What is most important in my life?”
The thing is, it's true - a hectomillionaire can have emotional difficulties. Are their "friends" there for the friendship or for the money? When do you say no to a relative who continues to ask for a few thousand dollars? To friends who have a "great business idea and just need some seed capital"?
Similarly, being a parent, or a newlywed, or switching careers, or any of those other things can and often do come with their own emotional joy and struggles.
> "All of these quotes are so absurd that they are meant to spur on the adventurous rebel."
My complaint about the essay is that it places the personal transformation that (sometimes) come from travel as somehow different and above the transformations associated with everyone else's coming of age stories. As such, it encourages a snobbish attitude, which will worsen connection to friends and family who are sick of hearing how you met the Dalai Lama in India, or about how thing are so much better on the other side of the fence, I mean, ocean.
Instead of humblebrag, it could have given real methods for understanding the effects of culture shock, and how to cope with it "back home", without ruining one's relationship with others back home, and thus prepare the rebel instead of putting the rebel on a pedestal. (Which, admittedly, seems like what the target audience wants done to them.)
My views on the benefits of travel are much more mixed. A lot of people travel overseas, even as a 20-something, with little overall change. Friends of mine spent 6 months working for an NGO in South Africa, came back, and have no more desire for travel. I personally didn't start my travels until I was in my 30s, self-employed, and a homeowner. And all those choices are great, including the choice to not travel.
The idea that since I waited until I was 31 to really travel overseas, on my own, means I was too old to "change" is ludicrous, and meaningless. Everyone changes.
BTW, I find your use of "adventurous rebel" interesting - based one what you've written, it sounds like the world traveler who starts at 32 is more of an adventurous rebel than one who starts at 22.
So, in a way it is a humblebrag, in that the "difficulties" are really "benefits", though I don't think the reader is meant to believe that the author is really having a very hard time with the "difficulties." You get the feeling that the author is very pleased with himself about his choice to travel, based on the whole theme of the article being "it's so good you can't stop and nothing else will ever be good enough."
If we are really supposed to empathize with the author about his troubles and the article is meant to be serious, than it's a very bizarre post and I basically share your sentiments. Under that light, it comes across as humble bragging and seeking sympathy for a choice he repeatedly chose to make and that he espouses transformed him and opened his mind, which is an important part of life. I have a hard time believing someone could write a post that is such a strange mix of complaining, bragging, recommending to people to not open their minds until their 40s, and an incredible hyperbolic tone of "travel is as strong as cocaine and it ruined my life." By Occam's razor I can only assume that it's not meant to be serious.
It may be a form of satire as you suggest. Such things exists. In 2008 there was a Onion headline "Junior Senator Returns From Backpacking In Scandinavia With Obnoxiously Broad Perspective On Infrastructure Reform", but I can't find a working link to it.
But satire works when there's at least a seed of truth. Consider http://totallysamsworld.com/backpacker-stereotypes/ , which lists "Backpacker Stereotypes". The last is "The ones who want to ‘find themselves’":
> These confused and emotional people have gone travelling to find themselves. They don’t know what they want to do for the rest of their lives, and all their friends are settled down, popping out babies and in great long term careers. Whereas they want to avoid commitment and responsibility for as long as possible. These backpackers can go from one extreme to the other… Living by YOLO, trying crazy new things with open minds, to getting all drunk and emoshe, crying on strangers and treating them like therapists. These guys are great when they’re on form, but if they are having a ‘moment’ it’s best to avoid them like the plague.
Here's a blog post from someone who has post-travel depression after a "year of mind-blowing adventures" - http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/coming-home-blues/ :
> You find your friends don’t understand the new you, don’t want to hear about your time sailing the Pacific while they sat in rush hour, or don’t get why you feel so uncomfortable being back. “What? You don’t like it here anymore?”
I think the comments help enrich the understanding of those with post-travel blues. Some choice quotes, that are not indicative of the whole, are:
> Can someone please help me cure the travel bug!! It’s ruining my life, relationships, careers and friendships!! ahhhh
> How can we not change after having experienced everything that long term travel offers? It’s hard to explain this to family and friends without sounding self righteous.
> If you don’t want to get married and start popping out babies it’s like the end of the world for some people. [I picked this one because it's almost exactly the stereotype quote from earlier.]
> What I find astounding is that many people don’t really care that I did. What to ME is an amazing thing, they don’t think much of it.
> Paul Theroux has a great quote: “You go away for a long time, and you return a different person. You never come all the way back.”
> Yep, there’s just absolutely no way that people who haven’t travelled long-term can understand what we go through.
I quoted these as examples to show that, yes, this is a real problem, that many people have to deal with. One of the ways to deal with a problem is to infer that it makes one special, perhaps like the agony of Marine Corp training makes one special, or of hazing. I believe the author's coping mechanism is to embrace the emotion pain, and the advice to others to avoid the pain is in fact a boast that the author can take the pain when others can't. "Thank you sir, may I have another!"
You believe that the original author recommends "people to not open their minds until their 40s". I don't believe the author is doing that at all. I believe the author thinks that anyone in the 40s is more set in their ways, so their minds are more closed (on average) than someone in the 20s.
There are multiple aspects. There's post-depression blues, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-vacation_blues , there's the excitement that comes from new experiences, funded usually from savings and not having to work, there's the difficult of talking about the experience without sounding like bragging. There's also the problem that at home you need to work more towards long term goals, which don't have the same immediate gratification.
As for FB, don't look at me - I stopped using it about 8 months ago. But my belief is that travel accounts bore people. That's why the travel shows (in the US) are often on public TV stations, and not prime time commercial stations.
It's pretty normal for people in their 20's to consider all of those questions, regardless of passport status.