“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” — Pico Iyer
In February of 2018, I got a parking ticket- a parking ticket for parking in the same place where I had been parking on a wide open residential street for the entire duration of the school year. My parking crime? Parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. A crosswalk that didn’t exist. A literally invisible, imaginary line on a street with no indication that parking within 20 feet of said imaginary line was unacceptable, and yet somehow still punishable by a $125 fine.
To say that I completely lost it is an understatement. I cannot even remember a time where something of relatively minor inconvenience sent me into a tailspin that left me fervently photographing the alleged “crime” scene and then driving home and sitting in my car for hours contemplating the point of existing.
I am not the kind of person who detaches from reality for receiving a parking ticket, even if for a completely stupid reason- especially if for a completely stupid reason. But I was not the kind of person that I normally am in 2018. The ‘me’ I could identify with, the one full of lightheartedness and humor and joy, was stolen from me after being drugged and raped and shredded by a system that enables and protects rapists. I was trapped in a Title IX investigation, a criminal investigation, and in painful thoughts of a night that I couldn’t even fully remember and only imagine.
Travel, for me and for so many, has always been a major source of joy in life. In March of 2018, at a time where I was certain that I had lost the capability to feel joy again, I had a trip scheduled to Portugal. My plan was to fly to Boston to first meet my newborn baby nephew, and hop the pond for the first time after that. I had traveled extensively through Central and South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean on shoestring budgets, but still somehow had never found my way to Europe. Portugal was calling to me.
A few snowstorms, delays, a bomb cyclone, and a cancelled flight later, I boarded a crowded day-late plane to Portugal. I didn’t sleep for the entire duration of the overnight flight. As the sun came up, I exited customs and used my rusty Brazilian Portuguese skills to figure out how to use the subway. I navigated my way to a hostel near a sunrise peer that kindly held my bags for the day. Then I boarded another train that I’m still not quite sure how I found so quickly and climbed a mountain to the Palacio da Pena in Sintra before midday. I spent the rest of the afternoon deliriously exploring the beautiful, winding, lush pathways and stunning viewpoints surrounding a wildly colorful palace on a mountaintop.
I felt peacefully alone and wonderfully alive.
Travel renews our perspective.
Sometimes the perspective that travel gives us comes from facing the hardship of places where we don’t live. Taking bucket baths with little red worms and tadpoles, living without refrigeration and with sporadic electricity, staying inside after sunset because it’s not safe outside for women- these things tend to permanently change how we view our own lives and upbringing, and how we understand and relate to the world around us. And sometimes a new perspective comes from not experiencing any hardship at all and removing us from our own, providing escapism to places where we can sit with ourselves and take time to remember how to breathe, changing our perspective on how we feel within. Travel is exciting like that- it’s a choose-your-own-adventure situation, and no matter what you choose, you still learn, grow, and see with new eyes.
Travel instills us with confidence.
There’s nothing quite as empowering as finding your way to some place you’ve never been before while speaking another language and realizing that you actually understand it enough to make it from point A to point B. Traveling alone is especially empowering. Having only ourself to rely on reminds us, or teaches us, of what we’re truly capable, and makes many other tasks feel easier when we return home. I used to be extremely quiet and shy, but after spending a semester in Costa Rica fumbling my way through learning Spanish and doing dumb things like accidentally asking for lesbians at the grocery store instead of tortilla chips (the slang word was pretty close, okay?), I realized that talking to people at home in a language that I actually understood didn’t seem so scary anymore and it completely changed my life. I’ve crossed borders in South America with a food poisoning-induced fever on an overnight bus without dying or getting lost, successfully conducted research in Mexico without knowing a single person before landing, and spent a beautiful week alone in Portugal where nothing went wrong and everything fell into place. Whether navigating bus lines or navigating unforeseen difficulties, doing so abroad with little help to rely on can give us confidence that we can handle the difficulties in our lives at home.
Travel gifts us with adventure.
Adventure, exploration, cultural exchange: these are gifts and privileges that travel never fails to provide. If we are open to receiving them, they can be incredibly healing and transformative. The connections we make with the people we meet, the places that look even more beautiful in person than on Instagram, the customs we learn that we want to bring with us, and the ideas that we leave with curious new friends are what make travel a significant and powerful experience. We do not come home the same as we leave. The adventure that travel thrusts us into also encourages us to leave our comfort zones and do things that we probably wouldn’t have considered doing at home. Would I normally consider jumping off a 40-foot waterfall just because we happened to stumble upon it at the end of a wild hike? No, but that’s the kind of magical spell that Montezuma can cast on its visitors. And the drop was exhilarating. Did I ever expect that going to a wake would actually be more like going to a party and eventually have wakes in various villages consume my entire social life? Also no, but in Guyana, wakes are celebrations of life and a beautiful display of community that I am grateful to have participated in. The gifts of the newness that we receive from traveling abroad feeds the addiction that keeps us traveling on.
Travel allows us anonymity.
“Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation.” — Pico Iyer
Sometimes, it’s nice to be anonymous and unrecognizable, especially when it feels like — or in actuality — home no longer provides a sense of privacy or safety. Over the week I spent in Portugal, I explored the blue-green coastline of quiet spring Algarve beaches, the colorful graffiti streetcars of Lisbon, and enjoyed total anonymity during this time. I could never quite adjust to the timezone difference, so by the time I reached the incredible city of Porto, I stopped bothering to try. It was a great decision, culminating in finding a warm and welcoming hostel that had the magical capability of creating a new sense of community each night in a colorful, photograph-laden dining room where glasses of wine were sold for a single euro. Strangers became friends that found connection through Google Translate, and we stayed out dancing until the sun came up. I didn’t tell a single person about what my current life was like at home.
For a week, I was anonymous and whoever I wanted to be. For a week, I was myself again.
Travel helps us reset.
There’s a reason that being transported to a foreign land leaves us feeling refreshed and recharged when we come back home, no matter what awaits us when we get there. Although the feeling didn’t last, a week-long trip to Portugal is what I attribute to keeping me going through the painful experiences of 2018. For at least a few weeks, I felt more in control and less concerned about the outcomes that I didn’t have any control over, anyway. Travel reminds us to let things happen as they will and enjoy the journey more than the destination. There was nothing to enjoy about my journey at home, but it reminded me that there was more to life than whatever destination I would be led to. Sitting on the beach in Lagos allowed me to breathe in the salty sea air and look into the ocean horizon and remind myself that life was happening outside of my home, and there was more to the world than my painful case, and that there was still more life and joy waiting for me in the future. I had truly thought that what was happening at home would kill me. But for at least a few weeks, I didn’t feel so trapped and stifled by what my life at home had become.
Travel heals.
“Thus travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.” — Pico Iyer
Traveling is a privilege for which I am grateful beyond measure, and during this pandemic year where my personal life circumstances still haven’t truly changed very much, I miss it indescribably. Before traveling to Portugal, I was living so deeply in pain that I forgot how healing travel can be. The joyful parts of myself, the optimism for a great future that I once held, had grown so rusty that they nearly broke in half. Travel heals because it reminds us that there is always something more waiting for us. There is always another way, another life, another chance, another future that we can claim or even just visit whenever we need to. Travel heals because it reminds us that when we feel like we’ve lost ourselves, there is a shoreline somewhere waiting for us to sit on its sand and find ourselves again, even if only momentarily.
Quotes from Pico Iyer’s stunning essay, “Why We Travel”: https://picoiyerjourneys.com/2000/03/18/why-we-travel/
