It’s no surprise that as the world becomes smaller thanks to cheap flights and social media, it’s easier to live vicariously through someone else’s posts on Instagram. For a moment we can blissfully forget that we are just endlessly scrolling through a sea of one-dimensional snapshots, and almost believe we are experiencing something real. Almost. But what if we really could dive inside those filtered photographs? What if we had moments so good every day, we forgot all about our phones for five minutes? (These five minutes of reading will be worth the scrolling though!)
Our modern era is convenient and now provides endless options for stimuli that are instantly gratifying. As much as we would all like to deny it, these new platforms are addictive. For example – social media, online shopping, or Netflix bingeing (I’m guilty, too) – they carry a numbing side effect to us humans. Young people are choosing to watch other peoples’ risks and mistakes through a TV series, instead of living and breathing their own uncomfortable, exciting, and electric moments. Political opinions are formed through repetitive media outlets. Exploring the the world in first person is not much of a priority by many people these days. People tend to like to stay comfortable, and go with the flow, living by the rules of the institutions which raised us (governments, school systems, churches, etc.), and are not truly questioning the life they choose to live – but at least with a bachelor’s degree and a job they are being “productive.”
These are some of my own subjective observations, which have brought me to ask the question: should “productivity” be the goal? Which attributes does a one-track mindset really nurture in ourselves? In some ways it seems that the increasing pressure on young people to be productive or what society may deem as “successful”, is blocking our innate, human creativity. Many people look for textbook answers to solve real life problems, but the real problem is that too many of us do not realize that there is not always an answer in the back of the book. Not every question is multiple choice, but that is how a majority of us young people learned how to learn.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s going to take more than a surplus of people who work 9-5’s for most of their adult life to build a better world than we found it. I’m not saying that I have done much better with my life, but we as a modern society have sort of lost the art of thinking for ourselves. Nurturing creativity instead of conformity is not popular among our institutions. Travel is so important, because it provides a space and time away from what is known to tap into creative problem solving, and endless opportunity for inspiration.
“The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.”
– Les Brown
The world needs creative thinkers, dreamers, and inventors now more than ever.
From as young as eighteen many people begin to dissolve into a life of mundane routines, giving up their dreams of writing a book, pursuing photography, or creating songs exposing the sadness and beauty of our world. Daring to be creative, or coloring outside the lines of the pictures that institutions have given us, seem rebellious now.
Maybe you are reading this rant because you are like me.
I was halfway through a degree before I realized that a fancy piece of paper with a photocopied signature was merely something I worked towards as a result of my schools putting formal education on a pedestal. Maybe you have realized that the path you have invested in is not what will actually help you on your journey to happiness, abundance, starting a business, and generally creating a life of success – or at least it might not help yet.
Not to say that university is a joke – it’s obviously very necessary for MANY professions, and requires an outstanding level of hard work and perseverance. But in a way it has made people the most malleable consumers. Even a university degree has become a marketable, consumable good – giving one a certain status symbol. Education itself has become a business to take our money, rather than a nurturing institution completely focused on building a brighter future.
Halfway through university I really began reflecting on my life and my decisions. I realized that chasing a degree at that time may not have been my best decision. I wasn’t happy, and the path I was on did not allow me to utilize and grow my best qualities. I realized if I continued this way, I would feel like I had failed myself. I felt a bit of optimism that the universe was trying to tell me something.
I needed inspiration to create something new. I needed to travel and write. Instead, I found myself falling deeper into a world of consumerism.
I thought it was odd that I flinched at the idea of investing my money in a year abroad, yet I welcomed a lifestyle of routine even though I always despised routine and loved adventure. I’d check my traveling friends’ Instagram accounts with an envy and disbelief in my own capabilities to be doing what they were doing. I could not understand how some people could afford to put their university and career path on hold.
Then, one day, I decided to ask myself the question “why not?”
Why can’t I travel? Why can’t I explore my passions? Why should I become another suit in society before I’ve explored the world for myself? Why am I living this life?
“Why?” is a special question. I think it saved my life.
I can only speak from my own subjective experience, but after traveling for a year and a half now (a short time) I’ve learned lessons infinitely more valuable than any expensive university degree could have produced for me (and I spent much less money). Traveling has been like one long, uncomfortable look in the mirror. I’ve felt very naked – at first it’s a bit awkward, but then it’s freeing. Learning about why I am here leads me closer and closer to the best version of me and my life in every aspect.
Travel shows me that if I let my environments become the variable, then I can become the constant. I’m the only one who can answer my “why’s” about who I am, and what I will do with this life.
Choosing to travel feels a bit like leaving the matrix and taking the red pill – to live in constant awareness and participance, rather than a sleepy ignorance about the world. However, travel isn’t just taking the red pill once, it’s taking it over and over again. It’s as if layers of illusions created by our own minds – reinforced by institutions – peel off day by day. Spending most of my life up until now in institutional settings (school, work, etc.) robbed me of my creative thinking, willpower and passion for living. The illusion for me was that the world is too messed up and too big to make a positive impact, and what I want to achieve is probably impossible, but gradually I have been able to see through to other side of the smokescreen.
Not only is travel great for the mind, body, soul . . . . it’s also a real adventure. It’s fun. There’s an infinite difference to looking at a photo of the Himalayas, and actually feeling the fierce winds drag me and my layers of jackets around the rocky, glacier-surrounded base camp of Mount Everest. No one will ever take away my memory of the beauty and nostalgia I experienced looking up at the stars in the Northern Hemisphere for the first time in a year – or the Southern Cross lighting my road in the dark for my nighttime runs in the farmlands of Australia.
Maybe humans already have climbed the tallest mountains over and over, been to the moon and back, written millions of songs, and charted just about every island on the planet, but there’s something special about doing something for the first time. Travel is a subjective experience. New tastes, sights, smells, and touches of new people bring the world closer together little by little. I don’t regret a single dollar I’ve spent, an hour I’ve worked, or a mistake I’ve made. Every day is a challenge to not only try something new, but to be someone better than I was yesterday.
Every day we have new opportunities to make new choices. If you knew you had the option to leave the matrix we are already living in, would you dare to choose the red pill?