There’s nothing out there. Whatever you are looking for, whatever you think you are going to find, it’s not out there. Traveling around the world doesn’t provide a new perspective on the reality of the world, it’s an escape from reality.
At the end of my around the world trip, I began to experience a diminishing return of happiness. Diminishing return, an economics concept, refers to a point at which the return (in this case happiness) is less than the investment (in this case travel and new countries). The happiness returns start strong but can’t be sustained over time. In the beginning of my trip, each country I visited increased my level of happiness. If I created a chart with the number of countries running along the horizontal X-axis and happiness along the vertical Y-axis, at the beginning of my travels a line rose upward to the right with each new country. The more I traveled, the more difficult it was to increase my happiness. I peaked. The line that had been steadily increasing, flattened out. I maxed out my travel efficiency. The line extended to the right with each new country but never went higher. At the end of the trip I was traveling for the sake of traveling.
I loved international travel. I loved visiting new countries. Then I stopped loving international travel. I lost the excitement associated with visiting new countries. I reached a point where there was no next awesome. The extreme of around the world travel turned travel into a chore. It became a mind trick to convince myself an activity or a new country was worth the time and money. By taking what I loved to an extreme, I destroyed the love. I went all over the world until everything looked the same. Food tasted the same. People acted the same. This is a positive. I may have destroyed something I loved, however, I think if everyone had this sameness view the world would be a much saner place.
Moderation is key. Society has competing forces and increasingly the only way for these competing forces to win is to become more extreme. Moderation no longer exists. Discussions are louder. More intense. Around the world travel is the extreme. It is the fringe politicians. It is the talking heads on TV. It is taking a concept to an extreme. There is nothing, that when taken to an extreme, is better than in its original state.
If you think you figured out life by living off $1,000 a month in India or a Southeast Asia country….you have blinders on. Anybody can live in those countries on $1,000 a month. Billions of people do this by their life circumstances, not as a travel lifestyle choice. There’s seven billion people who didn’t need to travel around the world to find the beauty in simple, who live their life through daily routines, who live as fulfilled as anyone else. There’s an obnoxiousness to bragging about how wonderful it is to live off $30 a day in a country where a majority of the population lives off less than $10 a day. When you visit the nice restaurants and rooftop bars and think, “this place is nice”, that’s not reality for the millions of people living in that place. Once I realized this, it became difficult to continue around the world travel. The people I saw day in and day out lived fulfilling lives. Why did I need to find the same fulfillment by traveling through China? That’s sad. Maybe you never reach that point. Good for you. I don’t know everyone’s life circumstances. I know once my blinders are removed, they couldn’t go back on.
Since I returned to the U.S., I’ve taken international trips to Cuba, Russia, and to visit my wife’s family in the Philippines. Despite Cuba and Russia being the last of my bucket list countries, it was the trip to the Philippines I enjoyed the best. Spending time with my wife’s relatives was better than walking through Old Havana and seeing Saint Basil’s Cathedral.
I’ve found new interests that make me happy. I’m careful to not take those new interests to an extreme. Whenever I reach the next plateau, I move on to something new. The around the world trip raised my happiness to as high a plateau as any non-familial activity. It helped me complete life goals and remove decades of what ifs, but I did plateau. I had to stop traveling to start something new.
At the end of my around the world trip, I began to experience a diminishing return of happiness. Diminishing return, an economics concept, refers to a point at which the return (in this case happiness) is less than the investment (in this case travel and new countries). The happiness returns start strong but can’t be sustained over time. In the beginning of my trip, each country I visited increased my level of happiness. If I created a chart with the number of countries running along the horizontal X-axis and happiness along the vertical Y-axis, at the beginning of my travels a line rose upward to the right with each new country. The more I traveled, the more difficult it was to increase my happiness. I peaked. The line that had been steadily increasing, flattened out. I maxed out my travel efficiency. The line extended to the right with each new country but never went higher. At the end of the trip I was traveling for the sake of traveling.
I loved international travel. I loved visiting new countries. Then I stopped loving international travel. I lost the excitement associated with visiting new countries. I reached a point where there was no next awesome. The extreme of around the world travel turned travel into a chore. It became a mind trick to convince myself an activity or a new country was worth the time and money. By taking what I loved to an extreme, I destroyed the love. I went all over the world until everything looked the same. Food tasted the same. People acted the same. This is a positive. I may have destroyed something I loved, however, I think if everyone had this sameness view the world would be a much saner place.
Moderation is key. Society has competing forces and increasingly the only way for these competing forces to win is to become more extreme. Moderation no longer exists. Discussions are louder. More intense. Around the world travel is the extreme. It is the fringe politicians. It is the talking heads on TV. It is taking a concept to an extreme. There is nothing, that when taken to an extreme, is better than in its original state.
If you think you figured out life by living off $1,000 a month in India or a Southeast Asia country….you have blinders on. Anybody can live in those countries on $1,000 a month. Billions of people do this by their life circumstances, not as a travel lifestyle choice. There’s seven billion people who didn’t need to travel around the world to find the beauty in simple, who live their life through daily routines, who live as fulfilled as anyone else. There’s an obnoxiousness to bragging about how wonderful it is to live off $30 a day in a country where a majority of the population lives off less than $10 a day. When you visit the nice restaurants and rooftop bars and think, “this place is nice”, that’s not reality for the millions of people living in that place. Once I realized this, it became difficult to continue around the world travel. The people I saw day in and day out lived fulfilling lives. Why did I need to find the same fulfillment by traveling through China? That’s sad. Maybe you never reach that point. Good for you. I don’t know everyone’s life circumstances. I know once my blinders are removed, they couldn’t go back on.
Since I returned to the U.S., I’ve taken international trips to Cuba, Russia, and to visit my wife’s family in the Philippines. Despite Cuba and Russia being the last of my bucket list countries, it was the trip to the Philippines I enjoyed the best. Spending time with my wife’s relatives was better than walking through Old Havana and seeing Saint Basil’s Cathedral.
I’ve found new interests that make me happy. I’m careful to not take those new interests to an extreme. Whenever I reach the next plateau, I move on to something new. The around the world trip raised my happiness to as high a plateau as any non-familial activity. It helped me complete life goals and remove decades of what ifs, but I did plateau. I had to stop traveling to start something new.