Learning Through Stories: What Have You Learned By Traveling?
Today begins the sixth round of the Learning Through Stories project on the Brilliant Blog. (Click on these links for stories from the first, second, third, fourth and fifth rounds.)
A lot of scientific research—and our own experience—demonstrates that we understand and remember material best when it’s presented to us as a narrative, or when we tell our own story about it. So, once a week, I invite you to share your stories of where and when and how you learned something in particular. And I’ll be asking you to do one additional, perhaps challenging thing that is nevertheless the key to the exercise: to draw out a generalizable lesson from your story that could apply to the learning of other things, and could be used by people other than yourself.
The question this week is: “What have you learned from traveling?” Write your answer below, and try to include as many details about when, where, and how it happened, as well as what lesson you can draw from it. I’ll start:
When I think of learning from travel, I remember a semester in college when I was studying abroad in London. I decided one weekend to travel by myself to Wales, because I was curious about the country (where some of my ancestors are from) and because I wanted the experience of traveling alone.
I say that traveling alone was something I wanted, but I think I had no sense, until that trip, of what it really meant to be alone—by yourself in a foreign place where no one knows you. I found it to be a deeply disorienting experience. I ate every meal alone, went to museums and castles alone, wandered the streets alone. I hadn’t realized until then how much the pleasure of traveling comes from sharing observations and discoveries with another person. Of course, I could have met and talked to someone there in Cardiff, another traveler perhaps, but I was too shy.
The trip only lasted 48 hours, and then I was back among the friendly, funny group of students from my college who were having a blast exploring London. Still, the experience stayed with me. I love being by myself—need it, in fact—a need I feel all the more acutely these days, amid the wonderful circus of family life with two small children.
But I have a better understanding now of the way aloneness and togetherness balance each other, and strangely enough, I feel like I have a sense of what true loneliness feels like. It’s an odd lesson to take from travel, but it’s been an important one for me in the 20 years since my solo trip to Wales.
OK, now your turn: How and when and where did you learn from traveling?
I learn some things when I traveled, but the most important part was before doing it.
For many years I trained myself mentally to be on my own. That includes learning how to cook or to clean, but also mentalizing “not to miss people/things”. One of the things I noticed on friends studying abroad was that they missed a lot family, friends, or cultural things.
I didn’t missed (at least as much as they did) people or costumes, in the sense that “I need them to survive and be happy”. Did it always worked? Not always, but must of the days. Many people doesn’t understand that, but it’s possible. (Also, Skype helps a lot)
I think those things help during studying abroad recently for two years in the US, in a peaceful town. (Many years ago I didn’t try that in other country as hard I did in the US, and I think that was a key aspect for my success).
That’s it, thank you for letting me share this.
Perhaps the most vivid learning was ‘I don’t want to die by an Indian road,” experienced during a bus journey on a trip to that most extraordinary and visceral of countries. The only way to cope with the repeated near misses was to adopt a belief in Karma.
Less dramatically, travel has given me many opportunities to distance myself emotionally as well as physically from everyday concerns. It’s not that you are a different person, more that different aspects of yourself come out in the fresh environment.
I can recall the bittersweet experience of holidaying with a boyfriend and realising that we were not meant to stay together, yet enjoying the experience of being in that place at that time with that person.
For work reasons, I have traveled since I was 26 (I am now 56). Two things I have learned; to be in peace with myself while alone, and to accept that life is a temporary event. When you travel a lot, all of a sudden you realize that the chance that you may die away from home and from yours is high.
After such memorable experiences as enjoying boat rides and exhilarating sailing lessons in the Vancouver Harbor and an afternoon at Playland at the PNE, on our final night of my first out of the country, we decided to go to Malone’s, a quintessential Canadian cuisine restaurant. Little did I know the events of our celebratory dinner would not only be the most memorable experience on my trip, it would completely change my relationship with my parents.
Shortly after sitting down at our table, my parents thought nothing of letting me go off to the restroom, after all I was 13 and we were in Canada. Several minutes passed and I had not returned to the table. My dad nervously tapped the table as my mother leaned in and asked, “Where’s Alex?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” my father replied. “I’ll go look for him.”
My father went downstairs and pulled open the restroom door. “Alex? Are you here Alex?” he called out hopefully, but to no avail. I was nowhere to be found.
He hastily returned to the table and told my mom what happened. She calmly responded, “Maybe he got lost on the way back upstairs and was too stubborn to ask anyone for help.” With a new sense of urgency my father raced downstairs and searched from the neon lit bar, passed the restrooms to the back door. He couldn’t find me. Just then he noticed the back door to the restaurant was ajar and the worst case scenario hit him square in the face. As he pushed open the door to the alley behind the restaurant, his heart sunk. There was no sign of me.
With slumped shoulders and a quivering lip he returned to the table. “I can’t find him. He’s gone.” My family was in a panic and ready to call the police to file a report when they noticed me pull out my chair and sit down at the table. With a gasp from my mother and a chuckle from my dad they both exclaimed, “Where were you?”
Completely unaware of everything my family had just gone through I responded, “I was in the bathroom.” Clearly, this answer did not make sense to them. As we recounted the events of the last 10 minutes, we realized I had mistakenly entered the wrong restroom. The entire time my father searched for me, I was sitting in the girls room relieving myself of lunch.
When my father told me about how he felt when there were no signs of me in the entire restaurant, I was touched. In the years before the trip I had been in a mild state of depression feeling as though nobody cared about me. I felt lonely and often locked myself in my room, which seems counter intuitive, but what teenager is intuitive? I felt as if my parents hardly paid attention to me other than when to feed me and drive me to and from school. It took a trip to Vancouver for me to realize how much I meant to my parents. They hugged me and kissed me when I showed back up to the table, something I had missed for a long time. After the trip I stopped locking myself in my room and I spent time with my parents. Just as I misread the signs at Malone’s restrooms, I misread the signs of my parents’ love for me. While I’ll always remember the sites and sounds from my trip to Vancouver, the souvenir I treasure most is how my relationship with my parents was forever changed.
In the last three years or so, I took my wife and two children on two lengthy trips to Europe–the first in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands before doing a two-week home exchange in Iceland last summer.
For both trips, my internal mantra was to “over-research and under-plan.” I did all kinds of homework to learn all of the things that we COULD do in each location, but beyond flights and accommodations I did not plan an itinerary for any given day.
So every day we got up and mulled our energy level, the weather, and the options. On a really hot day in southern France, my wife said, “What are we going to do?” I looked at my notes and said, “Well, there are three things that would work on a hot day around here: There’s a cave big enough to hold the Eiffel Tower; there’s a lake for swimming, or we could take an hour-long drive to get to the Mediterranean Sea.”
Every day had some great surprises, and it was great to not be locked into plans that would not have fit the mood or circumstances of the day.
The lesson for me is that knowledge is power and that having options–whether personally or professionally–about how to fill one’s day is a great way to maximize energy, enthusiasm, and engagement while avoiding burnout and disappointment.