Three psychological reasons why traveling is good for you and the world
It’s almost cliché that traveling educates you, is good for your soul, has the power to change people for the good and so on … but why is that so? Finding out has been one of the motivations behind the Sagesex World Tour 2010. Here are the first experiences on the spiritual and emotional effects of vagabonding:
First of all you realize that long term traveling can be an exhausting thing to do. We have met many travelers who after half a year on the road were very glad to return home, even when they had had a great time. I myself am dealing with the constant heat and the strain of homelessness by adopting a laziness admirable for me, and my newfound favorite drug, reading (especially Jack Reacher
1. Do something scary everyday
You can find this piece of advice in a plethory of self help and psychological advice books. Those who are able to take it are rewarded with a larger comfort zone, freer thinking, less fear, a feeling of personal power and many more psychological advantages. The problem: It’s incredibly hard to take this advice. I have tried. Not just once.
For one thing you do have fear of these things. Fear is a powerful motivator. Plus it’s so easy to forget. It means shedding habits. Habits are hard to shed.
Everything is different when travelling. Every day. Breaking habits becomes a habit in itself. It’s a piece of freedom that you get handed down here almost for free. In effect you are living outside of your comfort zone. I guess that’s the main reason why it’s so taxing. You’re always trying something new and unknown; it’s always the unknown that you are (unjustifiedly) afraid of.
Whether sneaking into temples past the police, climbing 50 meter trees, trying strange and potentially repulsive food, or simply approaching strangers … as a traveler you can’t really avoid doing something you fear every day.
2. Different places, different manners
This is what we associate with Goethe’s Italian journey or the cliché that “travel educates”: You don’t just see new landscapes all the time, it’s especially in contact with the locals that we realize the values we usually take for granted are not universal. Buddhists call this constrained ideas and travelling is a fantastic method for dissolving these: Sex for example is a fetish in western societies, an obsession, built and supported by a giant and hardly contained media machine. We all connect incredibly many moral judgements (ew, prostitution), constrained ideas (Sex is a mutual exchange between two individuals of equal standing), and ego judgements (I am attractive because …) to it.
In Cambodia, things are a little different: No money no honey – A woman’s capital is her sexuality. She is faced with litte more than two options: Catching a husband that takes care for her, or more openly sell her body. The effect of this are somewhat bizarre in western eyes: Everybody marries young. While being faithful is expected of the dependent women, for men sexual choice is mainly a question of financial status. Those who can’t keep up or want a piece of the women’s sexual power become ladyboys. Or gay. Being gay is hip among the rich youth (“We all act totally gay but in fact we do nothing! Someday I’m going to marry and have children”). In Cambodian Discos about 50% of the men are either gay or ladyboys. Which balances the apparently rare women. Having sex without paying for it is thought of as a funny pipedream here. It is just a service like any other. All in all it is an opportunity to scrutinize your own value judgements and constrained ideas. And to see for once the advantages of your own social order
3. Life is like a hotel
I learned this wisdom from the unconventional Buddhist Lama Ole, who often says: Life is like a hotel – you can use everything, but you can not take it with you. This idea is supposed to protect from attachment and suffering caused by the inevitable transiency of all things. There are dozens of phrases that express this eternal wisdom: “and this too, shall pass”, “ The things you own end up owning you” and alike. Of course, this makes sense rationally. But how often do we suffer because we lose something we are attached to? How much freer would we be if we could just let go? How hard is it to let this truth slip down from the head to the heart?
Well, on the road it’s really easy. How unbelievably beautiful, cheap, inspiring and fueling your shopping addiction Chattuchak market in Bangkok might be (and it really is – if you ever plan on a shopping spree, it should be worth going to Bangkok for it), it is immediately clear to us that buying anything is nonsense. We would have to carry it around for months. Even without that we always get the feeling of carrying too much stuff with us. Everything you need is there, ubiquitous and cheap. And tomorrow we will be somewhere completely different again. Things, people, places are temporary in our immediate experience. They come and they go. We do not hold on to them. An enormous liberation.
The way of the vagabond
These are only three mechanisms that can help us to become more couragous, more open, more conscious and more independent. And these properties almost generally pass for signs for maturity, side effects on the path to enlightenment. They are skills that are conducive to our own happiness and to that of all we meet. Seen this way, the path of the vagabond is an important and worthwhile one, for the good of all beings. So start out into the world or at least read sagesex. That works almost as well.
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