I would rather be a failure at something I love to do than a success at something I hate.
George Burns
I rarely visit my home country. Maybe once a year or even less. The reason being, the people I am surrounded by (mostly non-travelers) often try to bring me down and discourage me to travel by saying:
“You are already 24. It’s time to start a family. Time passes by and you don’t get any younger”. – C’mon people, 24 isn’t that old! I prefer to be a happy 50-year-old single woman with beautiful travel memories rather than a miserable young wife and unfulfilled mother.
“Everyone around you is getting married or pregnant and you just… travel”. – I can still get their lives, but they can’t have mine. I bet they would love to swap with me sometimes.
“You must be feeling so lonely there. Poor girl!” – There is no time to be lonely. You are surrounded by warm and friendly people who are sometimes like a family to you!
It sucks when your family and friends don’t get your travel spirit. It hurts even more when they don’t even support you and seem to be against you and your travel passion. I am still wondering if it’s a simple jealousy or something else hidden behind it – dissatisfaction with their own lives and the lack of fulfilment in their existence.
“You’re the lucky one. Being on a holiday all the time must feel awesome” they say. What they don’t know is that I’m not on a holiday. Part-time blogging and traveling combined with working full-time as a foreign teacher is a hard job, often exhausting. I have plenty of responsibilities to fulfil and that keeps me busy all the time.
When I go home I often get asked many questions regarding my live and travels in Asia, some of them are just way too funny or silly.
“Is that true that Asian boys have small penises?” (this question rocks!)
Most of people I meet when being in Poland want to talk money – how much I spend, how much I earn, how beneficial blogging is. I don’t mind it at all and I totally understand it. However, I easily get frustrated when they start asking if I am saving money for my retirement or how I am going to get financially ready for the future if I keep “wasting my money on pleasures”, etc. What they probably don’t know is that I spend less on my weekly travels than they spend on cocktails and drinks on Friday and Saturday nights.
The longer you live and travel in Asia, the less common topics you have with your European friends. It’s hard to speak the same language again. At least I find it challenging. While I am talking about how amazing it felt to be watching the sunset over Koh Phangan Island in Thailand, they are thinking of what dress they should wear tonight. When I am telling them stories of how amazing it was to live like a local in Siem Reap (Cambodia) and explore the temples of Angkor Wat, they tell me how they struggled to get a C for their exams. We are still the same, but so different.
I often wonder if we, world explorers and adventure hunters, will be ever understood by 9-to-5 job people. Why is it so difficult for them to get us? Because they never felt the way we did. They never left their comfort zones and got lost. Never carried their backpacks, never talked to a stranger…
Therefore, I’m so glad to be a traveler and blogger, and stay connected with fellow travel writers. Being a part of the travel community gives me such a strength to carry on traveling. Knowing that there are more people like me out there who aren’t afraid of exploring the world and sharing their memories with others , keeps me going and makes me the happiest person ever!
Travelers vs. Non-Travelers – Will We Ever Understand Each Other?
127 thoughts on “Travelers vs. Non-Travelers – Will We Ever Understand Each Other?”
“C’mon people, 24 isn’t that old! I prefer to be a happy 50-year-old single woman with beautiful travel memories rather than a miserable young wife and unfulfilled mother.” Amen to that! I think this quote should be included in the Bible!! Travelling is such an inspirational journey. You collect memories that no one will be able to take away from you! And that, my friend, is worth more than all the money in the world!
Thanks a lot for the kind words. Your comment really made me smile :).
I think I’m fortunate to live in a country (New Zealand) where travel is valued and almost everyone has travelled to some degree. We are such a small country that almost everyone heads abroad in their twenties at some point!
True. I actually met many travelers from New Zealand and they were all adventurous and so open-minded :)
OMG, this is so emotionally touching Agness. I loved it! You’re my favorit, thumbs up :)
Cheers!!
Hey Love The Blog Agness!!!! Most confusing things I read unfortunately are about finances…How much did you have when you started wandering? Do you work while you travel? Do you have a trust fund or family $$$? Even at $25. a day, (we hope it was that inexpensive everywhere!) your dough is going to go..So it becomes really necessary to understand for those of us not just going on “vacation” for a month or two, just how much people need, how long and far they might go, and how to gain more $$$ along the way..Work? What Kind?? Available to only certain nationalities?? Need a degree..? How bout TEFL certificate? Did you get one? Most people interested in taking off to backpack RTW tend to fall short because of $$$…What advice and insights on these questions would you offer..? Thanks..=)
Agness, thank you for this heartfelt post… You definitely hit the nail on the head on the issue of different people wanting different things for their lives — and beginning to impose that onto others… as if your choice to travel suddenly invalidates their choice to raise a family or vice versa. Maybe people get jealous or just plain insecure — maybe they worry that they are making the wrong decision or something? Maybe they worry for you and your future because it’s so “unusual” or not-the-average thing? Maybe they are trying to protect you? But at the end of the day, you are both adults and responsible for your lives… and you’ve chosen different things and that’s okay. It seems that you understand that, but you’re not the norm, so it’s hard for people to understand you.
Yes, I am so glad for the community that the internet provides! It really does help one to feel less alone and it’s so nice when you find that people GET IT. We still may be in the minority, but we EXIST! And sometimes that makes all the difference!
Thank you Erika so much for your lovely comment. Perhaps, they are trying to protect me, you might be right. Hope to find out this summer :)!! Love your attitude girl x
I live abroad, Costa Rica, but don’t get to travel as much as I would like. But I can totally relate to this post. I find that people who don’t step out of comfort zones and open their minds to the world and it’s beauty and possibilities can not understand my wants and thoughts. That is what life is all about though, you find your way and your meaning. Good luck and safe travels!
Cheers~Erin
Thanks for your comment. You’re 100% right,it’s all about finding your own way in life. Regardless of what others say. How do you find teaching in Costa Rica? Happy travels to you!
Really well written post, I can relate to this so much.
I’ve been back in Australia a few months since my 4.5 month backpacking through Latin America and I already can notice the difference between my friends and family. I’m lucky in the fact that they are supportive, But they still just don’t get it.
People often ask me what I’m doing next and when I tell them I’m thinking of just leaving to go travelling again they are like you can’t just go travelling around and live your life in a back pack and im like well… Yes you can and to me that feels like something way more meaningful than sitting working a 9-5 job I hate just to make money to escape those few times a year to travel.
I can’t wait to get back on the road and be surrounded by like minded people again. I feel like im a bit of an alien at the moment being back home haha
Thanks Brendon for sharing. I’m pretty glad you can also relate to this post. Hope you will make it somewhere nice and awesome very soon. I totally understand you :)
Great write up! We haven’t started traveling full time yet, but we already notice that we’re starting to have less and less in common with our friends. Good to know that this is normal :-)
True. There are gonna be even less and less common interests between you and your friends once you start travelling full-time ;-) and yes, it’s pretty usual :)
I completely agree – I have lived out of the US for 4+ years and it is difficult to go home. The comment you made about constantly being on holiday is so true. While I am still a bit new to this whole travel blogging world, I am currently trying to make a go of it.. and if you don’t have the corporate 9 – 5, everyone dismisses it as play time. From what I can tell, it is SO difficult and really time consuming. Thanks for this post – really great!!
Happy someone else can relate to that. Thanks for sharing!
I love this post Agness, I read once some people have an explorer gene and others are ‘nesters’ (or more homely types). Whether this is true or not it would definitely explain a few things!
Personally, I completely agree. I feel my life is completely different from my childhood friends and I don’t regret any decisions I have made. I think everything happens for a reason and if I didn’t travel 1/2 way across the world after graduating from university, I wouldn’t have met my husband and I wouldn’t have the amazing life I live today!
I’m an Asian – how small one gets to be considered small? LOL! The very same questions I got from my old folks when I arrived home from being gone for a week, a month of traveling.
Great writing.. Keep ’em coming..
great, thanks for sharing!!
What a great thought, Agness! I myself enjoy travelling so much. But I’m still 21 and still not graduated yet from university so I haven’t get much bad comments yet. (Hopefully I won’t).
Good luck to you! :)
Thank you Sharon! Keep being awesome and travel as long as you can. You are still so young!
WELL put Agness. The key comment in this entire article for me is: “It hurts even more when they don’t even support you and seem to be against you and your travel passion. I am still wondering if it’s a simple jealousy or something else hidden behind it – dissatisfaction with their own lives and the lack of fulfilment in their existence.” which I get a lot to. I’m convinced now that it’s the jealousy factor. Completely convinced. The thing is they won’t admit it. And they will get upset if you mention that, so I just get on with it – backpacking the globe, working hard, writing about it and bombarding people with adventures. Either they’ll eventually want to travel too or they’ll just have to be content with their lives. One thing is for sure, into my 11th year travelling, I ain’t going back to what is regarded as a “normal lifestyle”. Safe travels. Jonny
This is so truuue! I always find it hard to connect with people who don’t speak the same language as I do… sometimes they’d even lead me into questioning my own sanity :P
Glad someone can relate to it!! <3
Totally agree Agness! Our friends don’t understand our lifestyle.But we like it this way.Travel is what we do! I think you do exactly as you wish -it’s your life and you don’t have to fit in with others’ ideas of stereotype. We only live once right? There is so much world out there and we want to go explore it so that’s our choice.Some of my friends are in to house renovation,clothes,cars,more possessions.Well we just don’t care about those things.
24 is a bit young to get married and you can still travel with your husband and kids when you are a wife and a mother. Travelling with a kid gets you some benefits also…like skipping ques on airports or some other place, getting a good seat in the plane,restaurant, bus, or just having strangers being more kind and accommodating to you because you have a kid in tow.I even experienced having locals or other foreigners buying souvenirs for my kid (they find her adorable and she can speak english like a first language and can speak a few basic words of any place we visit)
Thats what I tell people every single time “You know if i really wanted your life, to live the way you live I could do it with a click of my finger”. However for them to live the life I or we do it takes a long time to prepare for it, it doesn’t just come over night which also another reason it is so rewarding. No one understands what its like to live the way someone does until you have done it, which is why they will never understand. Its sad but true that comfort zones are hard to break from the longer you stay in it, but each to their own hey.
You nailed it Jaryd! Yes, some people wait way too long to sett off :).
I really loved reading this article, because some of the situations and feelings you describe really shot home. It’s really difficult to describe to non-travellers what the life of a traveller is all about and whilst I’ve tried to find a good way of putting it many times, I find it’s often easiest to just go with “I go where the opportunities are”. That’s something people usually do understand.
However, having said that I also think that it’s often difficult for non-travellers to describe to travellers what the appeal of *not* travelling is. There is a certain comfort and security that comes with staying in one place and whilst many travellers dismiss the usefulness of that, if you think about it, staying in one place actually allows you to really integrate yourself into a local network in a deep and meaningful way that can be really difficult to achieve as a globetrotter hopping about all the time.
So, I really think there are benefits to both ways of living and building an understanding of either is a lot about finding the words to describe one or the other and trying not to pass judgement on either.
Agness,
You´re post has me torn in two directions. Having traveled through India, Russia and northern Europe and now being an expat for nearly two years in Barcelona and a brief seven-month stint in Germany, I know what its like to live in a world where most people don´t understand the beauties and difficulties of traveling and living abroad.
Yet on the other side of things, travel writers like yourself and like me are always at risk of expressing a certain sense of superiority which almost always includes a harsh judgment of our home cultures (“I prefer to be a happy 50-year-old single woman with beautiful travel memories rather than a miserable young wife and unfulfilled mother,” for example). In the same way that you argue that your family and friends at home can´t understand what it´s like to travel, you would do well for your platform if you acknowledged that you don’t understand what it’s like to raise kids.
I’ve been a solo traveler, a traveler with a girlfriend, traveler with a wife and a traveler with kids and I can tell you that having a kid is a far more rewarding experience than traveling until you are 50 years old. And it’s a bit close minded to assume that having kids is the end of traveling the world. Travel bloggers often criticize their family and their culture for not traveling, yet they rarely talk about their responsibility to pass their travel bug along to their children. This is a gentle criticism, so please take it as such.
I’m also curious … how many of the travel bloggers who’ve commented on your post have actually learned the language of the cultures which they’ve visited? To laud travel and cross-cultural experiences without learning a language is nothing more than self-absorption and halfhearted immersion in foreign cultures.
Thank you for sharing sweetie.
“I prefer to be a happy 50-year-old single woman with beautiful travel memories rather than a miserable young wife and unfulfilled mother” – so true!
Nobody should be judging anybody! We are all free to travel, marry, have kids, do whatever we like! We are lucky that we have choices.I have also travelled as a single, with my husband, with my husband and my kids. I have changed home countries and lived 30 years in the country my husband comes from, learned to speak 3 other languages, two of them fluently and tried to learn a little of the other languages of countries I have visited, including the last 3 years in China (the most challenging of cultures). But I don’t think my life is superior to others.I feel lucky and privileged.I try to understand those who don’t share my joy in travelling,but that’s their choice (in most cases). It’s not for everyone, and that’s fine by me.
I’m so glad I found this site. I can really relate to this post and your whole blog is really inspiring. I googled “Why doesn’t anyone understand my travel bug” in Google to find your site. I’m quite a bit older (43) and have just discovered the passion of travel over the past two years. I would love to do what you do. I hope to visit Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand on my next trip.
When I talk about my trip with friends and family, they just don’t get it. I feel like I’m not supported or that I’m being judged. It bothers me that it stresses out my mother, but I can at least understand her viewpoint.. I’m 43, but will always be her baby boy. haha.. She worries. I try to tell her that it is just as dangerous in my country (the U.S.) as anywhere I have been. Just as I don’t go walking down dark alleys in big cities in the U.S. I try not to go places that seem sketchy in Asia as well.. Just common sense! I just wish friends and family would support my happiness rather than seeming so judgmental..
I look forward to browsing through more of your posts! Thanks so much for the inspiring posts I have read thus far. Happy travels!