Of everything I learned and experienced in traveling one thing stands out above all the others:
"self improvement is the primary good in your life"
Traveling involves a lot of hedonism, and one day while traveling you suddenly realize you are on a hedonic treadmill. The first amazing meal you eat is life changing. The second one is about 50% as novel and good as that. Then you're comparing the next meal to 2 others, and the meal after that to 3 others... The cycle continues until you have consumed the earth and achieved emptiness. What remains is yourself. Once there is nothing left to consume to satisfy yourself you really have to ask whats next. The answer is building, and probably building yourself.
The lessons I learned about myself were some of the most hard:
- I understood escapism is not the answer
- I got a realistic set of priorities for my life
- I challenged and surprised myself socially
- I learned what really matters and what doesn't
- Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling
- Visiting Shenzhen made me afraid for America
- I experienced Hong Kong before china destroyed it.
- I watched history in real time (NK trump, HK, covid)
- I saw a Chinese person shrink to 1/4 their size when a conversation got political
- I see video of foreign countries and I see streets I have literally walked on
- I experienced being a guest in multiple different cultures and was culture shocked to my core.
- I saw the insides of homes and buildings in different cultures as well as the different ways things were constructed
- I experienced the inhumanity that poverty causes
- I experienced real life poverty and actual real happening today slavery
- I have seen the costs of not having rule of law
- I have seen pollution on the scale you cannot even imagine until you experience it
- I experienced my own privilege in very visceral ways
- I have experienced cultures without workers rights and its effects
- I have experienced multiple civil protests in other countries
- I have seen what its like to be in a functioning democracy
- I have been in a country where the voting system makes sense
- I have been around police officers that made me feel more safe instead of less safe
- I have made multiple friends I still talk to
- I almost fell in love
- I visited a major holy site and saw religion being practiced in a way I never had before.
- I have seen cultures in decline and cultures on the rise and how the people in them act and function
- I experienced being in cities older than my country
- I met people from parts of the world I wasn't aware of, with histories I'd never heard of
- I saw foreign propaganda first hand
- I found ways of life I liked better (and not) than what I grew up in
- I saw both how good things can be and how bad things can be
- I experienced pro-diversity cultures and anti-diversity cultures and their effects
- I was exposed to multiple different non conventional ways of life
- I have several outstanding invites and opportunities to visit people I have met who were also traveling.
- I saved one person's life with some first aid
- I learned several new skills