What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?
As someone who writes about travel, there probably isn’t much suspense around what my answer is going to be: travel. But it’s something I’ve thought about more and more as I’ve moved into my 30s, particularly because I’ve started to realise just how much life can be enriched by simply stepping outside the bubble you’ve grown up in.
Growing up, travel was always presented as a luxury. It was something you saved for, something you treated yourself to once the more important things in life had been taken care of. There was always a perfectly reasonable reason to put it off. There were bills to pay, education to finish, a career to establish and, eventually, the inevitable dream of buying a house. Travel could wait. Surely it made more sense to be responsible with your money and focus on building a stable future first.
And that was the mindset I adopted for quite a long time. I told myself that there were so many other things I could responsibly be spending money on, and in isolation, that logic makes perfect sense. Pay off the Master’s degree, save for a house, progress in your career, become financially secure and then you can start enjoying yourself a little more. The problem is that there is always another milestone waiting for you. Once you reach one goal, another one appears, and if you constantly make enjoyment conditional on having everything else sorted, you can end up spending a significant part of your life preparing to live rather than actually living it.
I think that is probably the biggest thing I have changed my perspective on. Travel isn’t simply a holiday or an occasional treat that you reward yourself with after being sensible. It can be an education in itself. There are things you learn by travelling that you simply cannot learn by reading about them or watching them on a screen, because there is something fundamentally different about actually placing yourself in an unfamiliar environment and having to experience it for yourself.
You begin to see the world from perspectives that are different from your own. You experience different cultures, different attitudes towards work and family, different approaches to food, religion, socialising and everyday life. You start to understand that the way you were brought up isn’t necessarily the default setting for the rest of the world; it is simply the version of life that you happened to know first. That realisation, although fairly obvious when you think about it, can be surprisingly powerful when you experience it for yourself.
Travel also has a funny way of forcing independence upon you. At home, it is incredibly easy to rely on the familiar. You know how the transport works, where you’re going, who you can call if something goes wrong and, for the most part, what is expected of you. Then you arrive somewhere completely unfamiliar and suddenly you’re trying to navigate a train system you don’t understand, find an address you’ve never heard of, communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language and work out whether you’ve just ordered what you thought you ordered or something entirely different. Somehow, you figure it out.
Those experiences might seem insignificant individually, but they gradually build confidence. You become more comfortable with uncertainty, more willing to ask questions and less afraid of looking slightly stupid in the process. You realise that getting lost isn’t necessarily a disaster and that most problems are actually solvable if you stop panicking and start figuring them out. There is something quite liberating about discovering that you are capable of navigating unfamiliar situations without having someone else there to do it for you.
Perhaps one of the most valuable parts of travelling, though, is the perspective it gives you on your own life. Spending time somewhere with a completely different culture can make you appreciate things you previously took for granted, while simultaneously introducing you to ways of living that you had never considered. You might discover that people place less importance on some of the things you spend your time worrying about, while placing far greater importance on things you have barely considered.
That doesn’t mean you return from every trip believing that another country has somehow figured out the secret to life. If only it were that easy. Instead, you come home with a broader understanding that there isn’t one single way to live a good life. Travel can teach you curiosity rather than assumption, understanding rather than judgement, and perhaps most importantly, humility. You become more aware of the privileges and opportunities that you may have previously considered normal simply because you had never experienced life without them.
And I think that is why I struggle with the idea that travel should be considered low priority simply because it isn’t necessarily a traditional financial investment. Of course, there are responsibilities that matter. Paying your bills, saving money and planning for the future are all important. I’m not suggesting that everyone should put their finances on hold and spend their entire salary flying around the world. But I do think there is a danger in believing that experiences only become worthwhile once everything else has been taken care of, because there is a very good chance that everything else will never completely be taken care of.
The other thing I wish I’d understood earlier is that travel doesn’t have to be expensive. Somewhere along the way, travel became associated with luxury hotels, expensive restaurants and perfectly curated itineraries, when in reality some of the most memorable trips I’ve had have involved nothing more than a reasonably cheap flight, a basic hotel and a willingness to walk around and see where the day takes me. You don’t need a private tour to discover a city. You can walk through its streets. You don’t need an expensive excursion to experience somewhere new. Sometimes the best parts of a destination are completely free. And you certainly don’t need to be wealthy to start exploring.
I think I spent too long believing that travel was something I would do properly later. Later, when I had more money. Later, when my career was more established. Later, when I had achieved the things I thought I was supposed to achieve first. Looking back, I wish I’d realised that there is no guarantee that the perfect moment will arrive. Life doesn’t suddenly reach a point where every responsibility disappears and someone hands you permission to start enjoying it.
If anything, travelling has taught me that the opposite is often true. You can build a future while still making memories in the present. You can be financially responsible without denying yourself every experience. You can work towards your goals while also allowing yourself to step away from them occasionally and see what else is out there.
So, if someone asked me now what I wish I had started earlier in life, the answer would still be travel. Not because I think everyone needs to become a traveller, and certainly not because I believe travelling automatically makes someone more interesting or enlightened, but because I genuinely believe I would have understood myself, other people and the world around me a little better if I had started exploring it sooner.
There is a whole world outside the bubble we grow up in, and you don’t really appreciate how small your bubble is until you leave it.
I just wish I’d left mine a little earlier.
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