I’m in no hurry to start baby-making. However, as someone close to my parents, I can’t help but think ahead of the values I’ll one day teach my children.
Here’s a start:
1. Travel with different types of people, and travel solo.
Every time we take a trip, who we are with impacts our experience.
Memorial Weekend in Vegas with your girlfriends will give you a very different experience than Aruba with your partner or a road trip with some fellow students studying abroad who are borderline strangers.
So travel with your family, travel with your best friends, travel with people you hardly know, travel while single, travel as a couple, and most of all, travel with just yourself.
2. Live in a new city.
Get out. Leave. Explore.
With your heart in your hand and a spirit of wonder, rediscover yourself by immersing into something outside your norm. You’ll be vulnerable, fascinated, and experience personal growth, especially if you take on expat life.
Studying abroad in college is a comfortable means to experience expat life. Moving to a new city for university is a start in itself.
Whatever your boundaries, take on the challenge of transitioning past your hometownand all the norms that it encompasses.
3. Some people – – lots of people — will do and think differently than you, and that’s okay.
What we wear, gender roles, education, health care, dating, marriage, and family…
Our paradigms are defined by our social norms.
With that being said…
4. Who cares what people think.
Seriously, perhaps my greatest lesson learned in travel is that aside from respecting social and cultural boundaries, you can choose those limitations for yourself.
What is okay in one society may be completely unacceptable in another, and vice versa. Since everyone has their own opinion of what should be right, there are few lines that cannot be blurred with subjectivity. If it’s not hurting anyone else (or yourself), it’s probably okay.
5. You’ll learn more from travel than in a classroom.
I’m 100% an education advocate. I get teens and young adults reaching out to me asking me how can they can become a professional traveler and get out of college or trade school. I’m not sure you can without the right tools and experience, although, I’m sure someone can.
The skills and processes I learned in an academic setting shaped who I am today just as much as my travel experiences have. Education should never be undervalued, but then again, neither should the experience of travel.
Getting lost, being dependent, chasing sunsets, meeting new people, and exploring new literal and figurative horizons are all a part of something you cannot learn from a text book.
6. Leave only a foot print behind.
The environment doesn’t need us to survive, it adapts. We need the environment. The more we travel, the more we stumble upon places in the world that have been ruined by humanity. It’s up to us to save it.
7. Never allow distance to keep you apart from the people you love.
Despite email, Facebook, Instagram, Skype, Facetime, and all things “social,” it can be difficult to keep many intimate relationships when traveling or living in a new city. It’s more work, but it’s worth it. You learn who really cares about you, and you meet new people who can instantaneously become life-long friends.
Cherish each other. What would all the travel in the world be without the people?
What would you teach your children about travel and culture? Tell me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter #TravelBreak
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