Why I journey: Exploring new lands – and discovering myself

February 20, 2026

When I ask others about their travels, they usually reply with an inventory of sights and actions: the Eiffel Tower, a ship journey on the Thames, the Grand Canyon. I at all times hear respectfully and with quiet appreciation, whereas realizing that I appear to be wired in a different way. I like to journey, however I don’t accomplish that to finish a guidelines. Rather, I enterprise out to see what I can study myself.

For instance, after I lately returned from Central America, somebody requested me what I had seen. I don’t suppose I gave them the reply they have been searching for once I replied, “I missed a critical bus to a port city, so I hitchhiked with a man hauling garbage in his pickup. And I had to ride with the garbage. The experience taught me to remember to be grateful for favors offered.”

My good friend’s indulgent smile conveyed the message, “Oh, you poor man.”

But I’m not a poor man. If something, I’m a pupil of the open highway, the place I’ve realized that most individuals are useful, variety, and inquisitive about vacationers. I’ve additionally realized that necessity generally prods me to do one thing a bit out of character. 

I notice that hitchhiking overseas (or at house) would possibly seem dangerous to many individuals. And I suppose there’s at all times a component of threat and unpredictability when partaking with strangers in unusual lands. Having stated this, there are additionally subtler methods than hitchhiking to expertise self-revelation when touring. Take delicacies, for instance. 

Some years in the past, I went to a distant village in Honduras that not often obtained outsiders. My 15-year-old son accompanied me. The poverty was placing, however so was the sense of neighborhood – your complete village got here out singing as we arrived. Then they slew and cooked a hen, which they set down earlier than us. Knowing that I used to be a vegetarian, my son smiled and stated, “So what are you going to do now, Dad?” The reply was clear: Eat the hen. It wasn’t notably straightforward to compromise my vegetarian rules. But confronted with a present of meals so freely given, from individuals who had larger want of the hen than I did, I disbursed with my orthodoxy and ate because the villagers seemed on, nodding their approval.

I additionally consider my first go to to Iceland, the place I went to spend a summer time engaged on a farm. No one within the household spoke English, and my Icelandic was restricted to a couple pleasantries. But one can get an incredible quantity of mileage out of “thank you” (“takk”) and a smile. I found that this was the quickest strategy to endear folks to me, and me to them.

The upshot is that I’ve by no means returned from a visit by which I didn’t be taught one thing new about myself, or the place I didn’t fortify a top quality (flexibility, compromise, risk-taking) that wanted reemphasizing. 

On a latest outing with an expensive good friend, who shares the identical journey sensibilities, I realized about my good friend’s backpacking journey by way of France and Belgium. I listened patiently to his considerate reflections, after which I requested, “How do you think you grew as a person as a result of this experience?”

He checked out me and stated, “Thank you for that.”

What ensued was a dialog meager in travelogue particulars, however wealthy with details about how the journey had yielded insights into my good friend’s life path, his skill to suppose on his ft, and his interactions with the folks he met.

There is marvel in viewing journey as an train in self-discovery. I’ve been at it for a very long time, and there’s nonetheless a lot of the world to discover. 

Now, the place did I put that atlas?