When I set off on this adventure, I envisioned myself fitting seamlessly into backpacking culture. I imaged a hippie version of myself, carefree with those flowing elephant pants I kept seeing. Maybe even dreads! I imagined fitting in so perfectly to this community that I would use my business degree to create a remote start up through my wildly successful blog, and return to America on holidays.
On February 19, exactly 9 months into traveling, I slept in until 7am, grabbed a cup of coffee and toast, and then spent three hours analyzing excel sheets to contained the data I had collected on travel costs. After a shower, I went to my final custom pantsuit fitting before dedicating a good chunk of my day to fitting said pantsuit into my carry-on luggage. I proceeded to make a list of things I needed to mail home in order to lighten my bag. With a concerning and unwavering lack of embarrassment, I zipped on the bottom half of my trusty zip-off khakis and began seeking public transport to the airport, three hours early.
So much for being a hippie.
I am realizing that a lot of the expectations I had for personal growth and learning on this trip were way off base. I expected to learn that the world was a beautiful place but there is a lot of human suffering. I expected to learn about the wonders of human capability after seeing breathtaking sights. I expected to find peace by hiking canyons at sunset in solitude. Mostly, I expected these moments to inspire me and fill me with passion and purpose, empowering me to come home guns blazing ready to start a nonprofit or somehow change the world.
It's not that I discovered these potential travel takeaways to be untrue. It wouldn't be accurate to say that I didn't experience moments of horror, wonder, and peace. But this huge expectation that travel would be the catalyst for the straightforward cause & effect process resulting in the discovery of my one true purpose was just as much of a mirage as my vision of hippie Deena.
What I didn't understand before embarking on this trip was that the things you learn from travel are not the things you see so much as they are the people you meet and the ways in which you let yourself authentically engage in local culture - two thing that inherently pressure you to leave your comfort zone.
The experience of discomfort clarifies a fundmental difference between traveling and vacationing (words that I saw more or less as synonyms before this trip). Whereas a vacation is time to get away from the stresses of home to relax and reset, travel is a nonstop barrage of new decisions, in a new culture, with new people that starts over completely every few days when you find yourself someplace new. If people back home think that traveling is a vacation, then there is a huge misunderstanding that would only add to a lurking feeling of isolation that threatens every backpacker. It is no wonder why you can't replicate this experience, why it is so difficult to explain, and why there is so much shame surrounding backpackers who feel unhappy.
Personal Growth
While I have not become a free-willed promoter of peace and love, there are parts of myself that I notice are different. Unexpectedly, I have become less controlling. The other three key improvements, patience, compassion, and gratitude, are changes that I was more intentional about nurturing and that blossomed in the backpacking environment.
Growth happens when you leave your comfort zone. Personally, my comfort zone is any situation in which I feel in control. More often than not, when budget backpacking through a random country, there have no choice but to just take things as they come. Complete lack of control - at the end of the day, it just works out. Maybe not the way you expected it to, but one way or another things will fall into place. After 9 months on the road, I have learned that things won't fall apart just because I'm not in charge.
At the meditation retreat in northern Thailand where I took a three day view of silence, I learned a similar lesson. Despite never speaking, I made friends with fellow silent travelers, volunteered to help out in the kitchen, and had all of my needs met. My words are not as necessary as I often think they are. The world keeps turning without me directing it! This was personal growth.
Somewhere early on in this trip, I identified patience, gratitude, and compassion was the three traits that I most wanted to become describing words of myself. I was incredibly unhappy in college, and turned into a bitter, sarcastic version of the Deena I want to be. I had become so hardened; it didn't stop me from engaging meaningfully in student government and developing fulfilling friendships, but I could have done all of it better if I wasn't so unhappy. My experience on the road has very intentionally included a lot of work to become softer, and the backpack travel environment allows me to practice these skills and excercise my progress at each destination.
Patience
Backpack travel has been a massive practice in patience. When you always choose the cheapest option, it is never the most comfortable and certainly never the fastest. In this new lifestyle, however, I make saving money my top priority, and dollars spent on transportation are dollars that could be spent on experiences. So, for nine months, the speed walking, everything-is-a-race minded, lead-footed character that is myself can most often be found waiting patiently in a bus station after electing for the 18 hour bus instead of a flight. While this specific situation may not continue to be relatable when I know home, I hope that the mindset transfers to life in the United States.
Compassion
In Albania I began reading a book about the power of compassion. I only made it about twenty pages into the book, but I got the gist (alright, haven't FULLY mastered patience). The book described the experience of meeting the Dalai Llama, and how the feeling of compassion just radiates off of him. He has a power to make people feel seen, heard, understood, and loved just with proximity. Incredible. I want to become a person that makes people feel that way - and I am a long way out so I had better start now.
I believe my efforts to exercise compassion for everyone I meet has directly fueled my improvement regarding patience. Regularly, my thought process about others look similar to this: “how is it possible for a person to be this slow, I didn't know legs even came with this speed option, is this really the best place to be…. Deena, you have nowhere to be this minute, it's okay, Maybe they are fully relocating their family and that’s why they have so many bags. No problem.”
Acknowledging my first reaction, and then replacing that reaction with a more compassionate alternative. Inherently choosing to relax and go easy on people has made me more patient, and I have decided that the who are much more closely linked than I originally considered.
Gratitude
This was the easiest skill to build simply because it is easy to pick out the things jam grateful for while traveling the world. Regularly on this trip, I will stop myself, take a moment, and think, “wow. I am so lucky to be here right now.” Over time, those thoughts have become less intentional, and I am automatically remembering to be grateful for smaller and smaller blessings. By stopping and remembering to be grateful before continuing my day, I have become more mindful, which has directly helped with patience and compassion.
I am nowhere near mastering these skills, but I can feel myself reacting more “softly” in every situation. I am not a hippie, I don't want to travel permanently, and I have officers ready with speeding tickets just waiting for me to come home and get back in a car. But progress is progress, and if I can already see the ways in which I am growing during this trip, I am anxious to see the my perspective when I am home reflecting on this experience.
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