Have you ever wondered about running away from home just to escape the stressful activities or daily boring routine? Do you know that actually running away from home does not help you recover from the stress? It just makes you happy on the trip, and the moment you come back to your home soil, you will get the stress back. However, it does not mean that traveling is a distraction. It can also broaden your mind. For example, when you stay at home doing the same routine, the same stuff, your mind goes into what is called autopilot mode. When in autopilot mode, it knows that you will be doing the same activity and becomes lazy on purpose so it can save power. But when you travel to a brand-new country, you find new cultures, new stuff, and everything is exciting.
As I said, you learn new stuff and new cultures; it pushes your mind into something called ‘active awareness’. When you go to a brand new country, you are immediately forced to look at your surroundings such as decipher public street boards and talk to new people in their native language. In this navigation, your mind constantly learns a lot of things that broaden your mind.
The next thing after active awareness is the fake stereotypes we constantly see online. Let’s be all honest—before visiting a country, we spend hours going through social media, watching YouTube, and doing a lot of research on Google. Let’s take YouTube for instance. You might watch a YouTuber say a restaurant is like pure heaven, only to find out later it was just a paid promotion and the actual spot is totally different. The exact same thing happens with countries. A lot of people are biased just to become famous and they judge places based on old ideas, saying it’s all the same. But later you go and find just to find out it is terribly dangerous or ;it is so different and amazing. Until you explore on your own and your eyes hit reality, you just don’t know what a place is truly like.
Beyond online stereotypes, traveling also a test of our own bravery and boldness. When you are traveling , you might miss a bus or get totally lost in a brand-new country. When you visit a new place, you often go to famous areas where it is easy to lose your way. At that exact moment, your panic will rise a lot because you are forced to face the situation completely alone. It is a ultimate scary experience, and your brain automatically leaves autopilot mode and goes into making your mind working at 100% capacity just to survive. You have to figure out how to look at reading signs, or ask strangers for help . But after you survive the chaos and eventually go back to your home soil, that is when you realize you just did a very scary thing all by yourself. By the time you get home, you realize you have permanently changed into a much tougher and bolder person in real life.”
And the next thing, of course, is why we all love to travel, to explore and to learn their culture. Let’s talk about the streets. We all go on a street walk when we go on a new country and we notice a lot of thing, maybe street food snacks, hotels and unusual colored buildings, apartments. And for most of the people love to eat the kind of street snack that country people eat. It all is colorful and with weird flavors. And the second thing is on museums and history. We all go to museums to see how people of you there people, their ancestor lives a long time ago. And next we all love to go to famous landmarks like their old famous landmarks such as giant temples, colorful buildings, old ruins. And which we may be even after going to our home soil use as a project maybe like on for an essay about how that country was and so much more, exploring can never be not fun
But do you know something? Actually, I have only told the pros of traveling. Now, let’s come to the other side of cons. Maybe imagine a person with their whole passport full of stamps, as if they they traveled to every single country in the whole world. But do you know what? That doesn’t mean they have a lot of idea about the countries. In fact, it doesn’t mean they even have a simple idea of what the culture is like. This is what is called the empty traveler trap. When a YouTuber or social media content creator goes on a trip, they completely focus on their videos, their posts, and they completely forget about the country. They just see landmarks but never actually focus on them. They just focus on the screen, keep scrolling on social media, and forget about why they even came to the country. Someone might say, ‘No way! They visit restaurants, eat the food, taste it, and even know the names of it.’ But that doesn’t mean anything. Even though they eat the food, they don’t really have time enjoy it because they have to focus on their videos. They might use a beautiful historic place as a background for their selfie or photos , but never to learn the history. Some people focus on their selfies so much because they just want to go back home and show off to their friends. Traveling like this is just like giving money to the government without even having an idea of what you paid for.”
The next point I am going to tell you about now is the complete opposite of the last paragraph . This is known as the emotional escape button. It is like when someone wants to press a escape button from the emotional stress they are dealing. For example, if someone gets a very low grade on a school , loses a job, or fights with their family members, they feel so stressed that they immediately book a flight to another country just to run away from their problems. But this is a big con. While they are sitting relaxed on the their travel trip, almost like their problems have disappeared. In reality, they have just paused them. The moment they step back onto their home country, they will get all that stress back. In fact, the stress will be even higher this time because they chose to run away and hide in a fake vacation bubble instead of staying home and finding a real solution to their problems.”
As I have told you once, traveling can be a true test of boldness and bravery. However, it also has another side—the dark side, which I am going to tell you about now. This is known as severe mental burnout. While going to a new country makes you tough, dealing with constant problems can quickly cause heavy stress imagine 100 people pushing through crowded areas, getting lost in unfamiliar streets, or waiting in a massive line to go to somewhere. Going through all of these unexpected struggles, day after day, completely drains your brain battery. Because you are forced to make choices and go through , your mind gets pushed to its absolute limit. By the time you finally make it back to your hotel or return home, you feel completely sleepy, and emotionally drained. Instead of returning from a vacation feeling refreshed and relaxed, your mind is left completely exhausted with 0% energy left .”
Just imagine when you have a lot of chores—completely boring chores like cleaning your room, getting your school supplies ready, and all that. But when you are on a trip, you feel completely free, as if you have wings and you can fly. However, it also has a major con. You only feel completely free while you are actually on the trip. Just after you return back home, you see that you have a massive amount of work waiting for you. This is what I call the mountain chore pile-up. You now have thousands of chores that you skipped during your trip, and you have to get all of them ready in a very short time. Just imagine that you have school coming up the very next day after your trip! Now you have to rush and get all your school supplies ready in just one day, all while dealing with the heavy tiredness of travel. It is a total nightmare. It is worse than regular boredom; it feels like pure hell.”
Now, you may wonder if traveling is ultimately bad or if it is ultimately good. Looking at both sides, I can officially say that both arguments are wrong and both arguments are right. Let me explain why the good side is right. Traveling absolutely has the power to wake up your brain, teach you bravery, and destroy internet lies. But that only happens if you put your phone down and actually try to learn from the culture. If you spend the whole time staring at your mobile screen instead, it immediately becomes a con and slides over to the bad side. The bad side is completely true because some people just travel to show off on social media, like content creators on YouTube, or to run away from stress and a mountain full of chores. In those cases, travel becomes a pure distraction to you rather than a huge advantage. So traveling is just like a tool. A tool can build something amazing or the complete opposite of it as a disaster , but only a clever and skilled person knows how to use it correctly. If a tool falls into the hands of foolish people who use it the wrong way, it becomes completely useless, and they won’t even know what it was made for.”
So remember, traveling isn’t just about how many stamps someone gets or how many miles they go. It’s about how you choose to earn your experiences. If you earn it by learning nothing, it’s a complete waste of money and something foolish. So stop focusing on your moblie and start focusing on the culture and when you come back to your home country will be a clever, tougher and wiser version of yourself”
By: Daanya mohamed kamaludeen
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