Have you ever noticed that a lot of people like traveling from place to place a lot? The more places in a short term, the better but most of them don’t get that it’s a form of escapism. I devoted a whole post to this matter before. The bottom line is that it’ll do you more harm than good but people neglect this. They just keep on traveling just to escape their own lives. A lot of people have to escape reality since sometimes reality can be harsh. I mean how many times have you heard that people are going to travel to find themselves.
They need a foreign country to get to know themselves. The statement itself doesn’t even make sense. Finding yourself means that you knew yourself before. Most people don’t. Second, how will you find yourself in a country you’ve never been to before?
You get the point right? You can’t get to know the real you if you’re constantly seeing new things/locations. You basically don’t have time to get to know yourself, hence it’s a form of escapism.
Traveling is the most subtle form of escapism
People use traveling as a way to escape all the distractions but distractions are part of life. Do you really think that there’s a place on earth where there are no distractions? They’re everywhere and your little monkey minds will notice them all. So there’s a big consequence of this kind of behavior. You won’t be able to be present in the now which will result in a lesser experience of the traveling itself. So you’re wasting money to find the real you. Which you can never find anyways, since you never knew yourself in the first place.
The real you is inside your head. People like to make things way too complicated these days. You don’t have to travel a million miles. You just have to spend time alone or try new things to see what you really like. For the others, who travel to escape from reality, there is a reality check waiting down the line. You can ignore reality but the consequences of ignoring it will be there.
Running away from your problems will solve nothing. Facing and solving them does. And yes, for some people this means that they will leave their current situation and move somewhere else. Not because they’re trying to escape reality but because their current environment is a bad/toxic one.
Travelling and the fact that you’re burning out
A lot of people suffer from burnouts these days but they just don’t get it. It’s hard to recognize it, to be honest. I had 2 of them and I didn’t realize it until I was reflecting on it recently. The first one wasn’t that obvious or I just ignored it. Your body and mind are giving you signals that something isn’t okay but you’re just popping pills to get better.
You stay in the same hateful relation and the same shitty job because you’re afraid to leave your comfort zone. Others just use their job as a way of escapism but they’re killing themselves slowly with all the overtime. Your problems will catch up with you. So what do all of these people do? They book a trip to a foreign country to save the relation, escape their dead job… At least for a while.
It doesn’t solve anything but they’re still convinced that it. You’ll be happy for as long as the trip lasts but reality will kick in after that. You’ll end up in a vicious cycle and it’ll be hard to escape it. The damage will only get worse if you keep on doing it.
You need to quit your job, end the relationship and so on. Fix the problem instead of avoiding it.
Bite the bullet, it’s time to take the matter into your own hands. Stop booking trips to escape reality. Face reality, your life will improve from there.
My vision of traveling
Travelling is great is like it to be honest. But I enjoy it way more now that I’ve found peace of mind. I don’t need to go to the party islands, I travel to learn. I’ll travel to Stockholm this summer if everything goes well. I’ll train MMA over there as well and I’ll release 4 blog posts a week just like as if I’m home. You should travel in my opinion since there are just so many beautiful things that you can see in this world. You just have to do it because you want to enjoy it and not to escape reality.
Life isn’t hard. You make it hard. It’s all about perception.
But what’s a better way than traveling?
There is no better help than self- help. You can talk to others all you want but most people will force you to follow their advice. This is plain wrong, my way is a way but not the way. I spend a lot of time by myself as well and I didn’t travel for 2 years. Being alone wasn’t so bad after a while since I was able to get to know myself.
It’s just sad that most people link being alone to something bad. People tend to look weird at me when I’m reading alone in a park or at a square. Being on yourself is not that bad and I believe it would solve a lot of modern-day problems.
You don’t have to believe me. In the end, you’re responsible for your own life and actions. So do what you want to do but don’t complain when you completely fuck up either.
Subscribe if you haven’t already
Till next time
Alex
