15 Feb 2015

Dear World:

I’ve graduated. I’m here. I’m ready.

B*tch-slap.

Okay, it wasn’t that harsh. More like a bit of a sharper pinch everyday. A reality check, if you will. My life was changing and I had no idea who had buckled my seat belt for me, but I was strapped in whether I liked it or not. Do I have regrets? Yes. No. Maybe. It’s more about having a good perspective than keeping regrets. Knowing when to play your cards and when to fold with dignity. Adulthood is also about accepting your limits; that you don’t really have a clue what you’re doing at times.

I get asked often why I advocate travel so much. At what point I think I’ll return home.

1. Home is where the heart is

And my heart is abroad. It’s reading about other people exploring places I can’t pronounce and adding them to my bucket list. I’m still so young, but I feel I got in the game so late traveling because I went to university immediately after high school. I never stopped to take a breath and no one had asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, it was just expected I would get my degree. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my diploma, but here’s what people won’t tell you.

They won’t tell you there are other options.

You can go on and finish school, or you may never step another day in the classroom. What do I think? I think these are the five reasons why travel is the only answer when finishing school.

2. Life is an adventure

Life is an adventure! How simple is that. Everyday should be exciting, should drive you to crave more of an intangible objective. Feel the rush of water from a spring in Costa Rica, teach English to children who idolise you in Cambodia, bathe beside Elephants in Thailand. Too often do we overlook the simplicity that this place is incredible, and that you are incredible.

3. Challenge yourself

Traveling isn’t an easy task. It’s dirty fingernails, it’s bug bites from plane rides, it’s never enough sleep. But it’s about figuring out who you are when times get tough and plans go awry. It’s about missing out on sleep because you’re drinking beers with a native who barely speaks two words of your language. It’s learning two words of his and never forgetting them. You can face anything when you’ve faced the unexpected with a good attitude.

 4. Learn

Here’s what they really don’t teach you in school. You are going to learn more outside a classroom than you could possibly cram in a lifetime of lecture halls and essay writing. I, myself, loved school. I loved soaking up knowledge from books and living in libraries, but I could write pages upon pages of the life skills I’ve picked up from my short periods abroad that I never knew before. School, especially, can be biased in educating students based on their location and their agenda. It’s your mind, mold it with the information you want.

5. Change perspectives

When you remain in the same place your entire life you become complacent. You define yourself by your surroundings and you perceive the world based on that. Your comfort zone is exactly that, it’s comfortable, like warm milk on a cold night. You need to shock your system, for your own good, and the good of the people whose lives you are a part of. You become a part of the world when you experience it first-hand.

6. Beauty exists in this world

It’s time you stopped scrolling online and seeing pictures in books to depict how incandescently beautiful this world we live in actually is. No amount of HD is going to do the colors, the memories, or the experience of seeing it in front of you justice. You can’t tell me seeing the view from the top of a mountain isn’t more beautiful because you made the trek yourself to experience it.