Wander the World vs Settling Down

After spending pretty much my whole life living and working in South Africa, In 2015 I decided to uproot my life and move to South Korea to teach English. When it was time to renew my contract after spending 2 years there. I decided to take a year off to travel around South East Asia and experiment with a nomadic lifestyle.

I had planned this trip well in advance, so I was able to keep my head down, draw up a budget and focus on saving enough money. I thought carefully about why I wanted to take this trip. This was an opportunity to learn new skills, develop current ones and build a small business which would be able to provide a small passive income.

Looking back, I’m grateful I took the plunge as it was without a doubt a priceless experience with all of its ups and downs. I learned so much in such a short space of time.

During my year of solo travelling I had this thought at the back of my mind: What are the implications of choosing to travel for an extended period of time? Will there be long term repercussions for your choices versus choosing to settle down and build a stable life in one place.

I will look at the pro’s and cons of long term travel and why I made a decision to pursue a nomadic lifestyle for a year.

The Pros:

Lifestyle Design:

I’m still amazed at the variety of lifestyles which are available to people around the world. I have met some interesting people doing things I never even imagined existed.

The internet has changed the career landscape completely. One of the things the education system is struggling to keep up with is the variety of career options available at the moment.

Traveling, especially staying in hostels is a great way to meet people doing interesting things. This has helped me a great deal in breaking down my own mental barriers of what a real job is.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

We live in a world whereby people are now able to follow a career path aligned with their personalities and lifestyles. The job fits into their life as opposed with your life fitting into your job like most regular 9 to 5 jobs.

When a person goes shopping for clothes, you rarely just look at the item and just buy it. Especially if it’s an expensive garment for an important event. One would try the outfit on, in some cases hire a tailer and get the exact measurements for a perfect fit. Even if it means we try on a variety of outfits or spend the whole day at the mall searching for the perfect fit.

Why isn’t such care and perseverance used when searching for a career? Something which influences every aspect of our lives. We seem to just reach out for any random garment and spend our life pretending it fits.

We are all created in different shapes and sizes, even if we wanted to wear certain clothes our proportions simply wouldn’t allow it. We need to be aware of our strengths and limitations in finding a comfortable garment (career) that allows us to live a rich and meaningful life.

I think while searching for your outfit or career, you shouldn’t be afraid of trying different options. Whats the worst that can happen? The item doesn’t fit or in terms of a career it’s something you hate. Obviously this is a lot easier when you’re still young and haven’t committed yourself to marriage, having kids or a home loan.

However, these don’t have to be seen as barriers. I’ve met people in their late 40’s, who woke up and decided they needed a change of outfits.

Long term travel allows you to dive deep into the waters of human experience, discovering a whole new world of infinite possibilities. This opens you up to new insights and expands your creative horizons.

Slowing Down:

Having time to wander around the world gives you time to focus on the things you want to work on. The tendency to always be busy is something society imposes on you. Being frantically busy doesn’t necessarily mean you are productive. In often cases it shows an agitated and unstable mind.

Being able to go through your day in a calm and peaceful state, regardless of the chaos around you is a reflection of someone with a deep state of peace and is in control of their emotions.

Being able to pay attention and be mindful of your environment is a wonderful skill to possess. While backpacking through Asia I attended 3 meditation silent retreats to rewire my mind to slow down and deeply focus on tasks at hand. In hindsight I now see the importance of deep focus, it has helped me tremendously in my language learning projects.

Worrying and being agitated about the past and future are signs of a restless mind. It’s perfectly normal to plan about the future or think about the past, but our propensity to obsess and constantly worry about these things creates a lot of suffering in our lives.

Personal Growth:

When one moves around as frequently as I did, you have to develop a more intuitive manner of interacting with your environment. Traveling around and engaging with people with different mindsets or cultural values can be a challenge.

Ignorance is one of the biggest setbacks when dealing with humans. But with compassion I’ve learnt to turn tense moments into opportunities to practice tolerance and acceptance.

People all over the world are dealing with their own problems. I’ve learned that on any given day I can come across a person dealing with abuse, addiction, neglect and these usually manifest in hateful behaviour.

This hate might seem to be directed at you, but deep down these individuals are in pain and are suffering. I’ve developed a thick skin in dealing with this type of behaviour. You’ll never change the mindsets of people who have had them shaped in certain ways for decades. I’ve had a few encounters with indifferent people who tested every ounce of my patience.

But my heart pours out gratitude at the countless acts of kindness I’ve received from people. I’m humbled at the amount of love that’s come my way in some of the most remote parts of the world.

This has taught me to always be optimistic, even when the odds are stacked against you. Life will always surprise you, such as a moment after a terrible storm, the sun comes out and a beautiful rainbow appears among the bright clouds. Life in many ways is like this. We just have to be patient and trust the process.

The Cons:

Meaningful relationships:

One of the things which becomes evident is how difficult it is to maintain relationships with the people you meet. On a few occasions I met wonderful people who I connected with deeply, and ended up spending a few days exploring places with them.

But one needs to remember that friendships formed while traveling are based on something that is not quite ordinary. Especially for those who are traveling for short periods of time. People are intoxicated with the feeling of being in an exotic country, the different food, beaches, alcohol and a number of external factors.

My point is that travel conditions allow us to be overly excited and infatuated with everything around us. True friendships or relationships aren’t only formed with good conditions. We form healthy relationships over time through good and bad times.

However, before you get to really know a person they are already on a flight back home to their normal lives of work, stress and anxiety. Any of the sentiments shared usually disappear very quickly once they are plugged back into their busy lives.

This becomes frustrating after a while, because you are unable to invest a lot of time and effort in developing long lasting relationships with people. After a while everyone you meet eventually goes on their own path.

You could argue that this happens even in a stable environment, which is true but it’s not as extreme and frequent while you travel. It is disorientating especially when you meet amazing people who you love being around but have to part ways due to expired Visas or the end of of a trip.

Routines:

This is the biggest challenge while traveling. I remember contemplating ending my backpacking trip after 2 months because of the problems I faced due to the lack of a proper routine.

***Unsplash+*** ***In collaboration with*** ***Behnam Norouzi***

I now understand the true value and importance of a healthy routine. Such as waking up early in the morning to meditate, exercise and study.

You are able to achieve this when the environment is conducive, but if you’ve ever stayed at a hostel you’ll realise the challenge of achieving this goal.

Human Behaviour:

I could write a book on all of the inconveniences. Inconsiderate, messy and noisy roommates. Drunk people waking you up in the middle of the night.

Entering a room to do yoga only to find someone passed out in the middle of the common room covered in his own vomit. Couples who are unable to control their sexual desires and decide they’ll re-enact an R-rated movie in a 6 bed hostel.

This is a small taste of what happens behind the illusions of travel life. But over time you learn to take life as it comes, and to remember to never take things personal.

Conclusion:

Choosing to move overseas to pursue a different lifestyle or career has both positive and negative implications.

There are many opportunities available for people to move abroad. University exchange programmes, moving to another country within your company, taking up a free-lance job which allows you to work remotely from any location or like in my case, take a mini-retirement to travel the world.

I’m a strong believer in acquiring unique experiences which force you to look at the world differently.

The world is a much more complicated place, we are dealing with problems which were unimaginable a decade ago. Such as climate change and a technological revolution threatening to destroy traditional jobs.

The world is in desperate need of people with unique skills, people who can solve problems on a global scale. To think globally but act locally. Travel challenges you to look at the world differently, so I’m a strong advocate of exploring this avenue.

There is also an argument that long periods of travel will put certain goals on hold or that a person will spend a few years travelling as a nomad only to find himself back home with the sober realisation that his peers have left him behind.

They have built stable businesses or have bigger careers. Which is a valid argument but I’ll lean towards the argument of wandering, especially if you’re young and only have a few commitments in life. The trade-offs aren’t as big at this moment.

Wander the World vs Settling Down

The Pros:

The Cons:

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