Travel is a set of unique experiences that form unique memories. Part of what’s addicting and pleasurable is that it helps slow down the perception of the passage of time, among many other positives.
It’s also self reinforcing in that when you think back, you tend to disproportionately remember travel vs other experiences.
There’s clearly a lot more benefits than that, but it certainly seems like a significant factor.
Last time I stayed in the same place/job for a few years it was a blur.
Someone else commented below about the hedonic treadmill.
Travel is what creates unique experiences in people because traveling is a rare thing for people in general.
When I toured we had 220-230 shows a year, everyday in a different place. I did it for 5 years. It's hard now to even tell one year from the other.
I surely made great stories, but most of them are foggy nowadays.
Most unique experiences I have left of that time are either global events, I shared the merchandise stand with Nick Alexander the merch manager of EODM the night before he was brutally killed in the Bataclan attack, or too important to forget, like one of the crew members having a baby and rushing him to the airport so he could be there on time.
But yes, I do remember some of the early games, building block towers, as if they were yesterday.
So at least for some people, based on the fact that they stopped traveling, it is difficult :-)
There's a lot about travel that just sucks. Flying is horrible, especially now. Hotels are soulless. You're surrounded by people trying to take petty economic advantage of the fact that you're in an unfamiliar place. Things never happen quite the way they're planned, and while sometimes this produces serendipity, it's sometimes infuriating or even terrifying. Still, people are remarkably able to handle discomfort, pain, and even danger if there's a purpose to it. With travel experiences, there almost always is. Sure, you spent six hours in an airport because some reptilian airline executive saved a few thousand dollars by cancelling a flight... but you got there, and you got to see and do things most people, in human history, could only read about.
Travel itself isn't fun at all. It's the experiences that travel makes possible that are rewarding. The good recontextualizes the bad.
This is paradoxical in a number of ways. For one thing, putting too much prior effort into engineering the experience leads to high expectations and disappointment. "I saw the thing. Now what?" We often don't know in advance what will produce the true prize memories. For some people, this is infuriating, and they have coped by creating Instagram culture, where the focus becomes the mindless collection of digital images ("look at all the expensive experiences I can buy") that makes travel, far from an escape from our decadent and purposeless treadmill culture, an extension thereof.
Travel and "education" are the two forms of conspicuous consumption that are socially acceptable. Spend $200,000 on a car and people will make small penis jokes (as they should) behind your back. Spend $200,000 (or forgo earnings in an equivalent amount) to take pictures of yourself next to recognizable world monuments... and you're "worldly". Travel makes you more interesting, people say, and it sure can... but if it were always so, then why are the people who get to do it all the time, the rich, so uninteresting and so useless?
Ultimately, what distinguishes travel is not that the experiences are good or bad in different proportions than are possible in a more homely life, but that we have the cognitive machinery--an innate conception of story--that makes the negative experiences, even if they are in fact petty and pointless, tolerable in the context of what is gained by going through them. In office life, this doesn't exist. We spend so much time there, we know the unpleasant bits are not only unnecessary but utterly detrimental. Office life is never physically or cognitively demanding, but it is emotionally stressful, and furthermore it delivers absolutely nothing of value. The people who stole all the money sell a little bit of it back to you, so you can survive today and return tomorrow. So perhaps the lesson is not that travel is wonderful, but that today's working life is so atrocious that people will spend substantial proportions of what little disposable income the system has given them, not to have rewarding experiences (which are possible through, but not guaranteed by, travel) but merely to escape it.
It's ok - we knew what we were signing up for before having kids, but deciding at 3 o'clock to spend the weekend camping is a lot less practical now. Even a quick outing requires a solid 30+ minutes of prep.
1 year for a person who lived 50 years is relatively short(2%) compared to someone who lived for only 20 years (5%)
If the 50 year old looks back 5 years, their life probably wasn't all that different. If they look back 15, their kids were still at home and they had a different job title but they were fundamentally the same person, and they feel they've been that way for a very long time.
Touring is like traveling, it is in fact traveling at its best, it's like an adventure.
The only difference with traveling for leisure is that you don't stay in the same location for long, but you are away from home for a long time nonetheless.
Usually you travel around 200kms a day on average, someday it's 800km under the snow, some day it's 50kms on the coastline of beautiful Sardinia, but you might cross region borders or country borders, people speak different languages, you travel from north to south or west to east and everything changes.
East Germany and West Germany are different, German Switzerland and French Switzerland are different, Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels-area in Belgium are different.
North and South Italy are completely different.
To explain my point better I'll tell you what a musician told me.
One year we met with Bob Log III (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Log_III) a few times, because we were playing in the same venues, so we spent few nights together before and after the shows.
He told us he used to make a crazy number of shows in Europe, sth like 80 shows in 3 months.
He always travels alone, at least he did at the time, and drive his own car.
One night he was going from Innsbruck in Austria to Stockholm in Sweden where he had a show 48 hours later, stopping at the northern German border to get some sleep.
He told us it wasn't uncommon for him, he did it to pack as much shows as possible in as little time as possible, earn as much money possible, and then spend a couple of holiday weeks with his family in some European city, before going back home.
But then he said he stopped doing it.
He was only doing 30 shows in a row at max, no more than that.
Why, we asked.
He said: because as fun as it is to be always around partying with the great people that come at my shows who am I grateful to, because they are the ones allowing me to live my life as a musician, I started forgetting things.
I couldn't remember faces, dates, venues.
I kept going to the same places and not remembering people names.
So he decided to do less shows, max 30, in a bit less than two months, to make good memories that stayed.
What I wanna say is that it is absolutely non-boring, non-repetitive and definitely not something that feel like working, not at the level I did it anyway, but too much is too much, even too much fun can be too much and lose its meaning.
It didn't feel like years after some time on the trip. More like I've switched whole reality, myself and everybody else. After some 2 months, life and reality back home was just a distant dream, too unreal to even consider seriously. Thank god it was before phones and wifi became so commonplace, it massively helped with that, writing an email once a week in some obscure internet cafe.
Coming back, it felt I've spent a lifetime away. Twice. Now I judge vacations on how it feels how long it lasted, the more it does the happier I am with deciding for it.
YMMV.
Having to fill in bureaucratic forms and pick your nose on demand with a stick, probably not fun.
Hitchhiking? Long distance sleeper trains? Motorhome? Sounds great to me.
I'd get on a Soviet sleeper train if it just took me from my house back to my house via some rolling countryside with the provodnitsi.
Outlier example, but I mean, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that flying on a private jet wouldn't be fun.
In general, I feel like most of my memories are structured around my unique (mostly travel-related) experiences. Oh 2015, that was the first time I ever left continental Europe and flew to Iceland in the middle of the semester to visit my friend. Things like that.
When I travel, either I want people or I want solitude. Most of my enjoyment from traveling comes from seeing family and friends, and it really doesn't matter that much where we're situated. But if I have neither, then being in a sea of people is really worse than just being at home. In that case, I want to be alone, and I can easily get that by driving 1.5 hours into the mountains where I live.
Travel isn't a bad thing, in fact it can be a great thing. My problem is that we've made travel out to be a grandiose life achievement. In the near past and for millennia, humans spent most if not their entire lives in one place, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Travel can still be an enjoyable experience but there is nothing more meaningful I'm searching for.
> Mucha gente cree que en la vida solo hay un gran amor, lo que no saben es que se pueden vivir varias vidas. […] Hoy acaba algo pero es el día de tu siguiente vida. Tienes que vivir muchas vidas […], muchas...
(English translation: https://www.deepl.com/translator#es/en/Mucha%20gente%20cree%.... )
I like to think that this can be applied not only to love (like here) but also to switching jobs, careers, places, … anything really that causes a big change (a diff, as you say) in life.
Same can be said about slaves. What conclusion should I draw? Honestly, I think you should get off of Instagram if you think travel is about life achievement. If getting to know your fellow humans and expanding your understanding of why the world is the way it is is not interesting to you, stay home. But also don't be surprised if people call you a troglodyte. I agree with everything you said about the problems of modern day traveling, that it is incredibly geared towards empty experiences. However, I believe this is because people only have a few days to travel. What irks me is seeing "43 countries visited!" because, as you allude to, it is a vanity number. It takes months to fully immerse oneself in a culture or even be invited into local life. However, that's obviously out of reach for 99.99% of the population and so we have the current set of cookie cutter experiences. Of course, none of what I suggest is easy. I also classify myself as an introvert, which you don't say explicitly but is abundantly clear you are as well. Just make a new friend in the country you want to go to, just one. The emotional energy it takes upfront is paid tenfold in the experiences that come after. Oftentimes, you will discover that traveling with said friend brings them tons of joy because it gives them a reason to go do all the things in their backyard that they have never done because it is in their backyard.
My theory is that it's less that it only stores unique memory, but it is always trying to resolve things into generalizable patterns. Kind of like a compression algorithm - but in this case not always accurate or reversible.
For me, time during the pandemic has been flying by because every day is nearly the same. Wake up work, maybe excercise in the evening, play video games, sleep.
My theory is that everything takes a little longer as you get older, but in very small increments, so you don't really notice it. E.g., getting ready in the morning takes just a few seconds longer each day as you get old and slow down, but you remember it taking a set time, say 30 minutes. Then one day, you're up to 40 minutes, but it still feels like 30 to you. Aggregated across your myriad daily activities, and you're either getting the same amount of things done in a day, but your day is "shorter", or you're just running out of time altogether, because "where did the time go?" So, you perceive that time is moving faster, because you're getting less and less done in the same span.
I feel you are being a little bit pretentious with this sentence. Travel is not a requisite for those things in any imaginable way.
Travel locally, by car. Trips of about 3-4-5 hours should be doable, for extended weekends or week long vacations.
You probably want school-aged kids if you really want to go far across different time zones.
Well damn, I guess breathing is in question since slaves can breath. /s
Honestly, I'm not sure the point you're trying to make with this.
> [Modern travel is] incredibly geared towards empty experiences. However, I believe this is because people only have a few days to travel. What irks me is seeing "43 countries visited!" because, as you allude to, it is a vanity number. It takes months to fully immerse oneself in a culture or even be invited into local life.
Maybe that's true, perhaps for many. To an extent I think it also is caused by a homogenization of global culture. In my case, it's that and the fact that once you've seen enough cities, enough forests, enough museums, enough shows, and eaten enough food... it all blends together and, after 30+ years of being on earth, as much as I cherish the existence of all of it, I don't necessarily find value in continually experiencing it all in order to cross them off the list of things to do. With the way so many of us are broadcasting our lives, we create this FOMO around travel that creates an illusion that we haven't truly lived unless we've been to all the major cities and historical ruins.
But yes, it's hard to live in the moment when you know you only have a handful of days to do what you want to do before you need to be back in the office, and the clock is ticking. Someone the other day was talking about the effect that meetings have on one's workday where, if the meeting is timed in the morning, you're less likely to get anything done before that meeting because the mind is anticipating having to switch gears for the meeting. If travel can only be done in a few days, the mind has to handle anticipating the travel and anticipating having to go back to work.
I don't think that's true, maybe just leisure travel is cheaper in the last hundred years so its more common. There was movement to the americas, westward expansion in the us. Europe immigration movements. large wars. pilgrimages
> So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.
I think we are all saying the same thing. That, at some point, all humans get tired of the repetition. My main counter to all of this is that travel grants you an opportunity to experience things through a lens unachievable from your home. It does not matter how big your city's Chinatown (or choose your favorite ethnic center) is, it is merely a glimpse into that world. To me, travel is an incredibly long process of experiencing your life as it could have been. Almost like experiencing reincarnation while you are still alive. Obviously, your body is still the same but you go through many of the same stages of childhood when learning a new language. Frustration that no one can understand you, immense gratification of finally being able to convey your ideas, etc. In this sense,
> FOMO around travel that creates an illusion that we haven't truly lived unless we've been to all the major cities and historical ruins.
Is entirely wrong and you should just simply choose to not play. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Stop being a sheep and following the herd. Pave your own path. If you so happen to end up in one of these places, great. At the end of the day, traveling somewhere new is an amazing opportunity to grow as an individual and expand your mind.
Before domestication, they had to follow the game animals around on their migrations, travel to find the edible plants and fruits, etc.
Even once horse, goats, and cattle were domesticated for their meat, milk, and fur (note this is separate from agricultural cultivation), humans had to roam in really large areas, from winter grazing grounds to summer grazing grounds as still well as following the game animals around.
I think traveling is a very ingrained behavior in humanity.
However, if you get away from the "tourist" spots, every place is unique and does offer something interesting to experience.
My wife and I were driving back to our rental in France from someplace and stopped for lunch at the only restaurant we could find in the little town in the middle of I have no idea where we were. Very little English spoken (we don't speak French, but can manage with a few words and technology) and had a very enjoyable meal and a little sightseeing in this small town.
Not saying that everyone enjoys that kind of thing, but if someone travels to Paris, for example, and has their sights only set on the popular things, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, etc. They're missing so much more to the city. Yes, certainly plan on seeing what's popular because that's why you went there, but also spend at least half the time exploring the little gems that every city offers that unique to it.
And for the love of everything, don't eat at places you can eat at home every meal just because you know it.
As an example, one thing I do enjoy is finding and visiting quirky little museums. The sort that might only be a couple of rooms worth of items. By nature each one is a new experience for me. But if I take a more abstract view I could say "I'm just looking at another quirky little museum".
Sometimes they're vibrant little untouched spots on the map - sometimes they're little dried up outposts of humanity, with some grand buildings left as testament that people once believed this place would prosper, and that there was money here at some point.
It's something I've always wondered at - you go out to rural america, there are a ton of small towns with really grand buildings in them, clear evidence that there was capital there at one point - and now its all gone - where and why did it go? The when is obvious usually, the other two, not as much. Thats an aside however.
I'll defend eating at the familiar when tired or worn out, but I do suggest trying the local color, you never know what you'll find out there - it might be good or bad, but it will almost certainly be memorable.
I suspect it's because we don't have enough time for introspection as the kids grow so there's nothing to anchor/solidify those memories.
To me traveling isn't about visiting different places. It is about opening up to the unexpected. Something we don't do so easily when following an itinerary.
In the South, its (depending on where) Black folks, in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, its Hispanic.
The fact that I see mexican/hispanic restaurants and groceries, in rural america (even in the south) tells me the world is changing.
Imo there should be a cultural exchange program where you students in cities and send them to rural schools for a semester and vice versa via exchanges. It's important to the American experience to be able to understand both worlds if we are going to continue to coexist in a union.
I recently traveled by bus not exactly by standards, in a more modest area. Before that I read some literature, which had as characters normal people, with some life situations in which normal people face. It made me feel different that two-hour road, I saw people differently, I felt a little like in one of the stories and I enjoyed.
I've long believed in some form of mandatory national service, just to encourage this - it would also decrease the risk for military adventurism if the military was a broader cross-section of society.
Put another way, some of my travel fantasies are pretty out there, I just know I'll never do them. Even if I had the cash and was willing to spend it, at that point the experience would never match the fantasy.
Of course, there was that time after a long drive, we stopped at KFC in France because my wife loves their mashed potatoes. KFC in France does not have mashed potatoes and I ate undercooked chicken which kept me in bed for almost a week (we were there for 5 weeks, so luckily were able to absorb that downtime).
Not to dissuade anyone from travel. ;-)
So if rural America is gradually becoming that way, and thereby the rest of the world following suit, I guess the reason to travel would be to experience different cultures before they effectively come to us all (or disappear all together in some cases). But that's really more curiosity than anything else, like visiting a traveling museum exhibit that has a limited run.
However, I must admit I may be wrong in my interpretation of this, and now I want to ask my dad again next time I see him.
It is a great idea, nevertheless.
I think the vividness of modern media also ruins things like the Eiffel Tower. It's one thing to see a photograph and aspire to one day visit Paris, but I'm pretty sure I've absorbed views of the Eiffel Tower from just about every angle in UHD drone and helicopter footage. In another era, I might be tempted to repeatedly visit it in my lifetime. As far as my brain can tell in this era, I've not only been to the Eiffel Tower but I've been higher than it. So biiiig deal.
Be very careful, because hotels are where the tourists are, and the places where where the tourists are are the places with a repetitive international “tourist” vibe. If you only have a short time to travel then hotels are OK.
I originally learnt this while “backpacking”: backpackers travel options and staying in accomodation intended for backpackers leads to a kind of internationalised backpacking culture experience that is completely disconnected from the culture you are visiting. Many backpackers had time, but used it poorly: budget constraints ekeing out their money for a longer time with lower benefit.
Even travelling in my own country, the early AirBnB experience was meeting people from other paths in life than my own, which is wonderful if you have the ability to share.
My current style of travelling is more on the edges, disconnected from backpacker style travelling and from hotel travelling, and spending my time more randomly. Planning trips generally draws you towards tourism experiences, because the information directed at you will lead you down the path of least resistance.