When You Travel Alone

When you travel alone, you will find yourself going through a range of experiences and emotions.  Depending on the makeup of your personality, your age, and your travel experiences thus far, you could experience them in any order and in any level of extremity.  But you will likely experience them all at one time another on any given trip of substantiality.  

You can expect to feel some anxiety, maybe even fear.  “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” you may ask.  “What am I doing here?  How did the chain of cause and effect result in this random outcome?”  This line of thinking is the almost inevitable result of going outside your own comfort zone.  Some people feel it in a somewhat darkly humorous way, a mild masochism where they are able to observe their own discomfort and find amusement in it.  Others may feel borderline paralysis, the feeling that they have jumped into the deep end of the pool without being able to swim.  Some may feel they are somewhere between these two.  Some may go back and forth between the extremes.  I know because I have felt all of these things, on different trips, at different times.  

You can also expect to feel intense joy at the novelty of it all, the discovery that there is so much out there in the world, that so much of it can be so different from your past experience and so beautiful-- not necessarily beautiful because it is so different, just beautiful in its own right.  And the fact that you can see both beauty in your own life and in the lives of those so completely alien to you gives you a sense of prideful accomplishment and wonder regarding all the yet undiscovered beauties that this world might have to offer.  

You will likely experience intense loneliness.  You will miss those people whom you love and who have not come with you.  You will want to call them, Skype them, Facebook message them, write blogs for them.  Some of this is because you simply want them around.  They are important to you because they care about you and because you care about them.  Life is just better when they are around.  But some of this loneliness comes from other places.  It comes from not having talked to anyone for longer than usual and just really really needing to speak.  It comes from talking to others but not about anything of substance, perhaps from having the same small talk conversation three or four or five times in a row.  It comes as a result of a fresh connection with our own weird individuality which it is very easy to ignore when surrounded by those we know, but which comes out guns blazing in the absence of strong outside influence.  It can come from being misunderstood.  It can come from realizing that you’ve misunderstood yourself or some other part of the world.  It can come from discovering and understanding something new about yourself.  Regardless of the source, you are likely to experience or re-experience your individuality in a fairly intense and aching way.  

If you are single, you are likely to feel excitement and arousal towards others of your sexual orientation-- countless thrilling possibilities and/or successes and/or frustrations that may result from these feelings.  Be it positive or negative, you can expect an extra charge to things that is not there in everyday life and that makes you more alive than on your average day.  

If you are in a relationship, you could feel that aforementioned loneliness at being separated from them, perhaps guilt for having left them, perhaps resentment for them not having come with you.  You may feel the aforementioned pride and sense of self at being your own person, a ME instead of half of a WE.  You could feel incredibly secure in meeting new people-- able to do and say anything because you know you have someone who loves and supports you, so you don’t need the approval of anyone new.  Their approval is nice of course, but you do not need it.    

You could instead feel tempted, desiring of others, and yet restricted from giving yourself fully to an experience with them, held back by your existing devotions.  

You will most certainly feel empowerment in your ability to handle yourself out there in new circumstances with people you don’t know, languages you don’t understand, and places you’ve never been.  The successful navigations.  The conversations you understood with foreigners, however basic the topics may have been.  Perhaps amazement at how easy it sometimes seems for this world to feel and be meaningfully, usefully connected.  Is it really this easy?  Are you just more capable than most?  Are you luckier than most?  Is this world really this nice?  Are people really this kind?  Whatever the answers to these questions, you will likely feel more able than you did before.

You may feel insecure, perhaps not wanting to speak to locals as a result of either the embarrassment of not knowing their language or fear of being taken advantage of -- or perhaps not wanting to speak to fellow travelers for fear of revealing your own loneliness or a comparative lack in experience and understanding.  

Or perhaps you’ll feel the opposite-- that you are more experienced and understanding.  This may make you look down upon these others and feel that to talk with them might be a waste of your time.  Or it might make you eager to share what you know and help others to see the beauty that you yourself have seen in this world.  How you feel and act is largely your choice. 

You will likely feel free to a rare degree: no job to prepare for, no people to see, no chores to complete.  You do not need to consider anyone else’s opinions when planning your day.  You do not even need to plan your day.  You can be yourself.  You can be someone else.  You can be several someones in different circumstances at different times.  You can find the time to do those things that are so easily put off until later because of the pressures of every day life, those self-growth type things like writing or meditating or reading or traveling itself-- which is more than anything a physical embodiment of our striving to grow through experience.

You might feel bored.  There is only so much time you can spend reading museum displays, walking around cool places, and taking photographs  (or doing anything, really) before it becomes tedious.  If you sense this boredom coming on, there are two healthy reactions.  One is to change it up.  Do something completely different to keep things varied and stimulating.  One of my favorite change-ups is going to a cultural show of some kind.  Some people try unique sporting activities.  You’ll still feel very tired afterward, but in a good way.  The other reaction is to simply rest and do something normal, typical.  Have a coffee and surf Facebook.  Go back to your room and lay down.  Have a beer and chat up the bartender.  Do one of the self-growth things mentioned before.  Mine is writing.  

You will likely feel irritation with someone.  

You will likely feel grateful toward someone.  

You will likely feel ripped off in some exchange.

You will likely feel like you got a bargain in some exchange.

You may at times feel strong, spiritually tapped in, even all-powerful-- the stallion that mounts the world.  You may also feel overwhelmed and insignificant- a speck in the great scheme of things.  But excluding adolescence and some key highs and lows of life, lone travel is something that best gives rise to new feelings and thoughts, whatever forms they may come in.  

So expect to feel and think.