I Love To Travel. Here Are Some Uncomfortable Lessons About Travel I Learned During COVID-19.
This is from a very personal and emotional essay I wrote back in the fall of 2020, a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to end a long time travel dream of mine and pushed me to move to Colorado:
A few days after my 28th birthday in March of 2020, I sat on a cold bench outside of the Boston airport next to my green 65-liter REI backpack, which I had intended on bringing around the world with me for the next 5 or so years. I sat there on that chilly, cloudy afternoon waiting for my mother to pick me up, who had driven from my home state of New Hampshire and would be taking me back there with her. When she pulled up, I put my bag in the back of her SUV. I got in the passenger seat, and when we drove away, the tears began.
What’s wrong?!” my mother implored.
To me, everything was wrong. This was the beginning of an era that knocked me to my knees. At the time, I thought the reason for my woes would be only temporary — maybe a couple of months. But as time flew by, the thing I was trying most to avoid turned into the possibility of a year, and a year turned into potentially two.
Embracing “Uncertainty.”
Typically, on an average day, in a normal year, at any given point in my life, I am the kind of person who likes to seek out new experiences. Adrenaline rushes, spontaneous adventures, and yet-to-befall-upon-me opportunities perpetually lie in wait for me to discover them. This flighty, adventurous, daring spirit of mine has on a number of occasions stirred up the fears of my friends and family members, who sometimes find my lifestyle a little scary to think about.
In the beginning, when I first started solo traveling, I was bombarded with pointed questions directed at me by exasperated family members, co-workers, and friends. “But aren’t you afraid of getting robbed/kidnapped/raped/(insert horrible event here)?” My former boss even laughed in my face when I told her of my future plans to travel alone. “How are you going to protect yourself?” she inquired with a smirk.
My more recent interactions with friends and family sound more like, “How can you possibly afford to travel for so long?”
Mostly, I disregard these comments. Yes, I am at times afraid to travel alone, (and occasionally question my financial security). But I also know a greater truth: that inherently, in order for us to be our best selves and grow into our fullest potential, we need to embrace uncertainty and discomfort from time to time.
I believe that what lies at the heart of this skepticism and disbelief I receive from the people around me derives from fear — a fear of the other, of the world, and most especially, a fear of the unknown. This great terror that so many Americans hold deep inside them about different people, places, and experiences feeds into a narrative of comfort, routine, and security that is acted out every day in America.
We watch the news and learn to be afraid of the “other.” We avoid travel because we work too much and simply because we are afraid — so we stay close to home instead. We take off few days from work and pile on the debt so that we can afford to pay for the expensive American lifestyle that we have been lured into. (I’m not even talking about luxury here — just basic things like housing, healthcare and education.)
Seeing the world — or doing anything out of your comfort zone for that matter — forces you to open your heart and mind to the people and possibilities abundantly awaiting you on every corner of this planet. This opening moves you to a place beyond fear, one that is more in tune with opportunity and experience.
So while frightening images do haunt me before traveling solo or doing something scary for the first time, I generally do the thing anyway, because I trust that the experience has far more to teach me than I realize. I know that the benefits of exploring unknown territory far outweigh the potential bad “outcomes” that may or may not ever actually happen outside of my own imagination. Plus, I’ve done enough risky, nail-biting activities to know that once I take the decisive step to jump off that cliff into the water below (…literally and figuratively), I will be glad for taking that heart-pumping plunge when I emerge, bolder and wiser, on the other side.
Cue 2020.
Several months after beginning what I thought would be an indefinite travel trip around the world, the WHO officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. I was living in Mexico City at the time, working in a language school, after spending 5 glorious months salsa dancing and exploring in Guatemala.
It was a few days before my birthday in March when I read on social media that my former co-workers in Massachusetts had all lost their restaurant jobs overnight. I started getting messages from my friends and siblings who implored me to come home. Suddenly I found myself extremely nervous taking the public transportation in Mexico City — home to over 25 million people.
Over the course of the next couple of days, I grew wearier as I heard that many Latin American countries and others around the world had begun shutting their borders. I discovered that a few of my travel friends were stuck in their respective South American countries for the time being, having received no advanced notice of border closures.
Then, I lost my teaching job and could no longer even apply for a resident visa. In a matter of days, my utter indifference to COVID-19 morphed into an urgent requisite to fly home as soon as possible. Before I knew it, my flight was booked; I boarded the plane before daylight the next morning.
After all the negative, fearful comments I have heard from my friends and family over the years, and even after imagining countless terrifying scenarios myself, I never thought that I would have to fly home due to a potentially life-threatening, global pandemic. For the first few months after arriving to the Boston airport in March, unwilling to accept my fate of being corralled back to the U.S. before I had planned to, I suffered an internal temper tantrum/anxiety attack because it felt like COVID-19 had stomped all over my plans and then added insult to injury by punching me in the face. (I know, didn’t we all feel this way?)
Facing My Fears.
I spent about 3 years planning for the day that I would pack my backpack to travel around the world again. From March 2020 onward, I slowly came to terms with the fact that my grand travel plans simply weren’t going to continue for the foreseeable future.
So for someone who normally wraps herself up in the thrill of new experiences, and after all of the effort put into preparing for such a lifestyle, I did not handle this unexpected set back very well. In fact, some of my worst fears in life seemed to be coming to fruition — that I would be forced to settle down and live out a lifestyle that I was not willing to embrace. That I would be stuck in this American culture of fear and overwork and debt and materialism.
Truthfully, my biggest fear is being “stuck.” I didn’t know how to continue on with my life without compromising my desire for freedom and sacrificing my intentions to travel indefinitely. There was no escape. There was no running off to the next place. There was nothing to do but sit with it. That anxiety led to the kind of devastation that comes after an unwelcome, life-changing event. The cry-every-day kind of depression. The pick-yourself-up-and-move-on-with-your-life kind of melancholy. The kind of distress that makes even your mom intervene. (And did she ever!)
Getting Comfy With the Unknown.
I guess when your biggest fear coincides with life-altering, dream-crushing world events, it’s not unreasonable to feel depressed. Being forced to “sit with it” meant that I had a lot of time to think about my reaction to this whole situation.
It eventually dawned on me that my comfort with the unknown has been, this whole time, accompanied by an assumption that the unknown could set me free. There is no need to worry about potential future problems, as long as I could resolve them, heal from them, or leave them. In the past, traveling set me free from living a banal, routine existence in America — one that fosters materialism instead of “experiencism,” that is bundled up in the assumption that excessive work and an abundance of money are the only merits to life. In other words, this is another version of being stuck that I wanted to avoid at all costs.
Stuck I did not want to be.
For many months after coming back to the States, I pined over the lifestyle I was trying to live beforehand. But it wasn’t mine anymore. I left it behind in Mexico City, where the winds probably picked it up and swept it away to a new unknown location. (I imagine that it’s lying on a beach somewhere in Australia.) The reality of COVID-19 didn’t change, and when I realized that I might be stuck here for one or even two or more years before I could travel again, I cried nearly every day for weeks.
Through my tears, I eventually recognized my own hypocrisy. The whole reason that I quit my job, moved out of my apartment, got rid of most of my possessions, and left the country was, in part, because I wanted to feel groundless. I wanted to challenge myself, maybe even push myself to my limits. I wanted to experience the unknown, even if that came with some risks. I never imagined a pandemic risking my life, but that’s why we call it “the unknown,” isn’t it?
Sometimes, what upsets you deeply is often the best catalyst for self-reflection and change.
Discomfort Leads to Discovery.
Having to come home made me feel like I was trapped in a tiny cage. This cage, I came to understand, was entirely designed by me, a cage I unconsciously created out of the dreadful loss and sadness and pain that I was undergoing at that time. But it pushed me to confront something that made me incredibly uncomfortable — that feeling of being stuck. In other words, I was forced out of my comfort zone. That made-up cage I found myself in at the beginning of this pandemic encouraged me to rethink my options and find a new, totally unforged path forward that was doable with the current climate.
I wouldn’t have discovered a whole wide world of seasonal work if it weren’t for the pandemic. I wouldn’t have moved out to Colorado. I wouldn’t have worked for a ski resort, where I met people from all over the country and where I could ski or snowboard every single day if I so pleased. And I wouldn’t have met my partner, Niko (who has joined me in my current travels)!
For the tiny cage I found myself in, for the “stuckness,” for those days where it felt like I sobbed endlessly, I am extremely grateful. I had to take a leap of faith. This wasn’t what I wanted initially, and there are still many unknowns ahead, but these days, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself for discovering a new trail forward that aligns with my vision and values. In fact, my life has changed significantly since I moved to Colorado and the opportunities that I envision for my life have expanded beyond what I ever expected.
Security is a Superstition.
One of my favorite quotes goes:
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
Helen Keller
Nothing is ever certain. This time has reminded me why I do what I do. To travel and explore and live a life that is, at its heart, founded in the very nature of groundlessness and insecurity means that I must be okay with the unexpected — even and especially when it’s not a preconceived possibility in my own mind. Even when it disrupts my plans that had been more than 3 years in the making. Even when I have to face my biggest fear of all and somehow find a way to move through it.
Hopefully, we can all take to heart this lesson from 2020: our plans are just bound to get fucked at some point or another. Here’s to forging a future for ourselves that is curious, reflective, creative and resourceful in the face of shaky uncertainty.
