Grow by travelling

Earlier this autumn I went on on a backpacking journey to Asia visiting Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Persuaded that it will make it easier for me to meet new people, I went alone.

It gave me a lot of experiences, growth of self confidence and change of mindsets. It took me a while to sort it all out in my brain to put it in short form down on paper. I will here focus on the ways I have developed my personality rather than on experienced events and I will start at the moment when the changes of my views of the world first became clear to me, after coming back home.

Seeing my living room for the first time in a month it was far bigger then I remembered it. The excess of Nordic low intensity light gave a feeling of cold vastness, contrary from small and dusty Asian hotel rooms where intense sunlight through a small window filled the room with heat. The room has not changed I have. The change was of the kind earlier described by Shastar in War of the World Models.

My model expanded by seeing that in real life different culture, different perception of time, different ambitions among people and different social norms work in an organized society. Even if the kind of organization differs a lot from the western world, there normally are logical explanations to the differences. Sometimes the bus gets delayed by two hours, but in some regions buses are the only means of transportation used not only for passengers but also for mail. Every now and then they take a different road in order to deliver a package (i.e. seven 50 kg-bags of rice). Like most stressed westerners you could, to the locals great contempt, find somebody to yell at, or you could just accept the fact that you are in Cambodia. After all, you are experiencing the normal life of that country.

Getting to understand other ways of life made it easier for my to challenge my own views and disobey the social norms I have been taught during my childhood, which I have found limiting to my personality. Also it has become easier for my to avoid being upset about lots of those annoying incidents we are subject to every day (such as delayed buses).

The nervousness I initially felt about going alone was rapidly gone. To my great relief I found that there were thousands of people like me travelling alone, only hooking up with someone for short periods of time which sometimes led to longer friendship. Actually it was harder to avoid meeting anyone then to meet someone. If you do not start to talk to anyone, someone will initiate a conversation with you.

People are generally friendly as long as you are being friendly to them. That realization helped me to be more confident in social situations and to avoid the feeling of loneliness.

In my opinion, travelling like this is the ultimate way of enriching ones personality. On the inside you gain self confidence and motivation to do what you want even when your will conflicts with all the others. To the outside your model of the world grows to cover more views of life. It makes you more tolerant to other peoples ideas and you on the other hand get more respected among them. What you have to say gets paid more attention to since your stories are actually based on real experiences that the others might not have.