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Comment by sown | Hacker News Reader

Why does everyone say 'travel' or 'volunteer' when these questions get asked?

I'm not being rhetorical or sarcastic. I genuinely don't know. I can only assume that it's something I'm missing and everyone else just 'gets' without having to say it outloud (this has happened) or ... something else?

I've done both and I can't say I really cared for travelling since it's such a hassle. As for volunteering, which I've done, it feels exactly like work -- except even less people wanted to talk than before. Do people who give this advice actually go volunteer?

> INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS

Yelling at people doesn't help. It kind of feels like people are telling a person to just cheer up if they're clinically depressed.

I think that the problems here, and their solutions, are a lot more complicated than anyone gives them credit for.

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Both travel and volunteering have to do with connecting with other people in the most quintessential ways.

Volunteering has to do with helping people in need. When you do that, you realize the scope of how much fellow humans are in need. As social creatures, we humans can't but feel humbled and feel that there is still something meaningful worth striving for -- a sense of purpose. Given that we are all tech people here, it's safe to assume that daily needs and 'creature comforts' are so easily secured that we easily don't feel that sense of purpose as it pertains to ourselves. Volunteering connects with others who inherently have a sense of purpose, since they struggle, and the act of volunteering is an act of committing yourself to the purpose of helping fellow humans in need.

Traveling opens your mind to new people and new cultures. And those ideas can get you to re-think what you believe, and you can grow as a person. You can also learn things to make the world around you better. What is the culture around education in Finland, and why is their ed. system so good? If Americans increasing want public transit, what does European rail transit have to each us? How could Bus Rapid Transit pioneered in S. America be even better? How can some cultures in Africa and India be a peek into human history 4000 years ago? Does South India's plant-based cuisines have the tastiest answer to current diet and environment movements in the US?

We tech people & entrepreneurs are taught to build things that people want, so talk to users to find out what they want. We are also taught to leverage other experiences and ideas to inspire solutions to our problems at hand. It should be obvious, now, that both of those ideas are directly related to volunteering and traveling, respectively.

> Volunteering has to do with helping people in need.

I've volunteered before, as I mentioned. Given what you wrote I think you may have missed that sentence. The way you write it, you come across with less warmth and more smug; like you're talking to a dog that speaks english. I may not understand what's so magical about volunteering or travel but I'm not heartless. I imagine it's a mis-understanding, but you might want to consider how you present this.

> And those ideas can get you to re-think what you believe, and you can grow as a person.

This also has a similar issue. Do you mean that if I don't travel I'm less of a human, to be held in contempt? That seems to be the implication. Again, I think it's a miscommunication. Most of the things you mention don't require me to be physically over there.

I didn't get the same feeling as you. I received it with quite a bit of warmth, with a little bit of wistfulness? Try picturing Gandalf saying the words.

What did you do for volunteering? I'm sure each type has their pros and cons. For me, I once volunteered to help abused children. One of our activities was to help them create a board filled with drawing of people that they can trust. We went through it with all the kids afterwards, adding where they can find them. Helping, no, empowering those kids was the most fulfilling feeling I've felt, and this was almost 7 years ago (I'm 22).

Unfortunately, I haven't traveled (world trip coming after I can freelance), but I hope that it will reveal more about myself as a person as I put myself into new situations across the world.

The sibling comment said it better than I would have -- I wrote that with warmth and a little wistfulness. :-) Of course, this is print/internet, where we don't have the benefit of audio and facial cues.

All I'm saying is that humans, as social creatures, like to feel connected to people. Different people feel comfortable with different manners of connectedness. Volunteering or traveling are not the only ways of connecting to people or broadening your mind on how the human experience can be. But to me, they represent the most direct forms.

Or inversely, you know, it's not the same to be Facebook friends with someone as it is to actually regularly spend / talk with that person. It is different to experience a place by reading about it, by visiting on a tour, and by living there for 2 months. (Which is probably why I especially think about the environmental problems of food production and food packaging -- all my time spent in Tamil Nadu / S. India over the years especially heightens my awareness of the potential to solve that problem that I wouldn't experience otherwise.)

"Growing" as a person was referring to collecting more / varied experiences... you know, the whole broaden horizons & learn-new-things thing. I don't think, however, that if I say that learning and education are inherently good things, that it would somehow imply that more educated people are 'better' than less educated people. All it means is, with all things being equal, taking advantage of an opportunity to learn is good, and the more you learn, the better.

Do people who give this advice actually go volunteer?

I do, thank you very much.

Volunteering feels like work because it is work. But it has important special properties. You aren't paid, so you aren't beholden. You get outside your regular circles and meet more people. You are likely making a positive impact, which not everyone feels they make at their day job.

Certain types of volunteer work lets you do a hard day's labor, stand back and enjoy the feeling and admire the results, and then go back to your regular job the next day. In other words, you aren't trapped in hard labor every day.

Oh, and one of my favorite parts: it is something different. It's nice to, one or two days a week, do work that is totally different from the work you do 9-5.

Why does everyone say 'travel' or 'volunteer' when these questions get asked?

<Hansonian cynicism> Because of the signals it sends about them. It says that they have high openness, are altruistic and have high enough confidence to go to strange places. </Hansonian cynicism>

Seriously, most people giving advice are (mostly subconsciously) doing it primarily to make themselves look good, or get the warm glow of being higher status than the person they are advising. This goes a long way to explaining why people are so eager to give advice, and why so much of it isn't good. Lots of good advice would be very unwise to give publicly because it sounds bad because it's cynical.

If you want to help people donate money to the Against Malaria Foundation and then go look at their video page [http://www.againstmalaria.com/Videos.aspx] while reminding yourself that your money has gone a substantial portion of the way to saving a life ($800 per life, IIRC).

Happiness resaerch suggest people get more satisfaction out of travelling than expriential happiness, looking back on it people are glad they did it.

Volunteering and traveling both put you in a position you are not normally in. They will give you new ways to look at things, from how you might be acting as a customer (volunteering) to how much work goes on behind the scenes (volunteering) and how different people live, work, and play (travel). It's mind-expansion. It's fun. It's rewarding. You make new friends. You find new things to love. Your perceptions change. You become a different person.

Of course, you can also volunteer and travel and get absolutely nothing out of it. Depends.

> Volunteering and traveling both put you in a position you are not normally in.

Volunteering is work. Sometimes hard work, back breaking even. I don't do it for fun, and certainly not the pay. I did it a few times to try to see what it is people get from it, and while it was nice to help people in need, I don't see it as you listed. I'll probably do it again soon because someone has to do the work.

> It's mind-expansion. It's fun. It's rewarding. You make new friends. You find new things to love. Your perceptions change. You become a different person.

I don't see it as, "Man, you blew my mind" type expansion (what ever that means). In fact, a lot of what you just said could be applied to just plain work.

Again, either people are getting something from it that I don't 'get' without having someone enunciate exactly what it is or people who give this advice don't really volunteer, or something that needs explaining to me.

Have you ever learned another language, or lived in another country for an extended period of time?

Often when people say 'travel' they mean immerse yourself in another culture. One of the deepest learning experiences you can have that forever changes your view of the world and your own culture.

You may have already had that. But if you haven't, understand that travel is as varied a thing as reading. There is a vast difference between War and Peace and a blog post.

> Have you ever learned another language, or lived in another country for an extended period of time.

Yes and yes.

> Often when people say 'travel' they mean immerse yourself in another culture. One of the deepest learning experiences you can have that forever changes your view of the world and your own culture.

I think the loose definition might be part of the problem. Some people might say that going to the west coast for a week and telling everyone how they touched a whale was like being born again vs living in another country for a month is confusing, and doesn't seem like the same problem. Still, having lived in another country where I could vaguely speak the language didn't seem so magical.

The definition is loose because everyone does it differently, and finds something different.

You should look into Buddhism, or Yoga (which is many many things, only one of which is doing poses on the floor). What most people never understand is that there is a lot of introspection, thinking, reflecting, noticing, altering, and understanding that you should be doing.

One example: by concentrating on your breathing (and I mean really noticing everything about every aspect of the action of taking a breath and what happens before, during, after, etc etc) you will learn things. You will learn how your body works. You will learn what it sounds like when you breathe. You will learn how deep a breath you can take. You will learn how long you can hold it. You will learn how your posture can affect it. You will learn how your breath affects your immediate surrounding. How it can affect your mood. How it can alter sensation. How it can be changed. How it can be tuned. And a million more things, just from spending time thinking about and tinkering with your breathing.

You can take this one concept of constantly noticing, evaluating, and learning about all the possible aspects of one single thing, and begin to do the same thing as you travel, or as you volunteer, or as you do any thing at all.

This is why the concepts of travel, volunteer, etc are so broad. There is an infinite number of possible things to influence your brain, which will alter every possible thing about you (the way you think, talk, speak, act, etc). But you can't just stand in a room and wait for enlightenment. It's an active process. You must seek out change by taking everything in and thinking about it. It doesn't happen overnight.

Reading your description of all the things you can learn about your own breathing reminds me of a line in a Seinfeld episode when Tia the model turns to Jerry and says: "I've never met a man who knew so much about nothing"

Reading your comments I have to ask - what IS magical to you?

I don't think there is anything more to it. I think it is a matter of personality or perhaps something along the lines of "neural wiring."

I feel pretty much the same as you do - for stuff like this the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. I think that for some people the juice just tastes better - maybe they have "taste buds" that I lack or maybe I have a much better imagination such that the difference between the actual "juice" and just thinking about the juice is much smaller. FWIW, I also get no pleasure out of physical activity, no runner's high and after working with a physical trainer 4 days a week for two years getting into shape and dropping 75lbs to a normal weight I felt no better than I did when I was fat - the only difference that was perceptible to me was that my old clothes were too loose. Maybe that's all related, maybe not.

fwiw I never got any pleasure out of physical training either - lifting weights, running, etc is just pure tedium for me.

I do, however, get a surprising emotional boost from physical work. Axe, shovel, sledgehammer, wheelbarrow. I don't so it all that regularly, and the effects would no doubt wear off pretty damn fast if it was my day job, but when I do it invariably puts a smile on my face

Firstly, since I don't want to spam replies, a comment on an earlier post:

> "Yelling at people doesn't help. It kind of feels like people are telling a person to just cheer up if they're clinically depressed."

Except it's completely different. "Go interact with human beings" is actionable advice, he even listed a whole bunch of ways by which this interaction can be achieved. This is very different than a general, un-actionable "just get better, duh".

To do what he suggests you literally just follow his post. His advice is IMO relevant - just like when I'm feeling frustrated at work my coworker tells me to go take a walk. It's directly actionable, and it works.

> "I did it a few times to try to see what it is people get from it"

I think this is at least part of the problem.

This is sort of like saying "I picked up a basketball a few times, I just don't get it", or "I sat in front of a piano and hit some keys, but I still don't get it". Volunteering is not some kind of religious experience where you go and 30 minutes later you've received the Divine Revelation of Why This Matters. There is no magical threshold where you will suddenly be dumbstruck with All The Volunteering Secrets.

If you want to grok volunteering, you need to have more than a glancing blow with it. You will not collect the rewards on the first day, or the second, or the third.

Speaking as a sometimes-introvert, it's very, very easy to go travelling and not meet anyone.

Yep, if you can't mingle in your home town, you won't mingle in a foreign town.

The difference is that you have to talk to people at some point when you're traveling, only if to ask for directions.

GPS.

My record is three weeks on the road with no conversation deeper than ordering a meal or checking in to a hotel. And I'm not really all that introverted.

I did then use gumtree to find some folks to travel with, but still, just saying 'travel' is not really a cure-all for introversion.

I think traveling brings a sense of anonymity that, for some, can lift a lot of social pressures.

To throw my anecdote out there, I find that I have no trouble at all talking to people on the road and making friends but I can't do that at all when I'm at home. I have very few friends at home but when I'm out traveling I find myself opening up conversations with perfect strangers. I've made some terrific friends doing that.

Just wish I could make myself do it at home, too.

In contrast, I have learned that I am just as shy in the middle of nowhere as I am at home.

Try travelling on a budget. A really really low budget. You'll have to bum lifts, work casual labour, sleep in less than luxurious places... If you aren't making meaningful human contact after a month on a starting budget of $100, then you probably never will.

Begging for rides and sleeping in stys seem worse than total isolation to me.

I also can't imagine someone who is an extreme introvert would be able to pick up odd cash jobs really easily, and also don't seem like great ways to have extended contact with other people.

I'm an introvert and had a great time when I was younger travelling with no money. It's not just meeting other people, I would say one of the most satisfying things about travelling is the risk. Risk is scary, it wakes you up, makes you feel alive. Being comfortable is wonderful, but if you are always comfortable I feel like a part of you goes to sleep. I was biking home on my normal comfortable route the other day and starting improvising another way home and got fairly seriously lost. I was late and it rained on me, but I felt happier.

"felt happier" when you got home, right?

It's an interesting point that risk makes you feel alive, I've experienced it myself and you feel brilliant afterwards.

Once I got trapped in a wave machine as a child and was being spun around underwater, but kept down the panic and managed to work out how to get out again. I was probably underwater for a total of 90-120 seconds. People were going crazy when I came back up but once I'd got my breath back I felt incredible.

I wonder if it's possible to apply this sort of risk-reward feeling to earning money? Is this what people feel like when they put everything into a startup? Money just sort of seems so mundane when compared to physical activity.

I felt happier when I was out in it too. One of my happiest memories is sitting under a tree in a thunderstorm eating muesli. I was in a country where I didn't speak the language and I had little money and no place to stay. I sat under that tree crunching away and being incredibly happy that I was having an adventure. My new resolution is to stop being so comfortable and get out in the world some more, even if it hurts.

If volunteering feels like work, than you are doing it wrong. I remember the day I volunteer for a local video game convention. That week-end I did more hours than I would be ready to do for work. I also meet great people. You could argue that I liked it because it was a video game convention... but it's my point. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if you volunteer but you don't like what you do, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it (except if your goal was to do a good deed, but in this conversation, it's not the goal).

However I don't think this is actually a solution for anyone. It worked well for me because these people were like me... and this is exactly why I think his idea of open co-working space is amazing. I hope to see more co-working space like that.

Because most people are on the bandwagon that travelling and volunteering is the thing that enriches their lives. Personally, I can see where they're coming from, but for me, karaoke, creative writing, and dancing are a lot more engaging and fun... But it just so happens almost everything is more fun with people

The original comment didn't dismiss creative activities- it was the first thing suggested!

> As for volunteering, which I've done, it feels exactly like work -- except even less people wanted to talk than before.

I've volunteered in the past for a local community garden. It's physically demanding work, but it was great stepping away from all the technology in my home, not have to worry about "leading", "driving", or "innovating" like I do at work, and just take simple orders to do grunt work with the end goal of making a community better.

Sure, I enjoy my day job and going home to watch Netflix. But variety makes for a richer life.

> I've volunteered in the past for a local community garden. It's physically demanding work, but it was great stepping away from all the technology in my home, not have to worry about "leading", "driving", or "innovating" like I do at work, and just take simple orders to do grunt work with the end goal of making a community better.

When I was in college I was often taking 18-20 credit hours per semester while working 35 hours a week in an office job where I had enormous autonomy. I had a life outside of that as well, but I was still restless.

So I got a second job at Target, perhaps 20-25 hours a week. I can empathize with the need to not be in charge and let someone else give the orders. I happily did whatever I was asked and let my mind completely shut off. The extra money was nice but not particularly significant. Eventually they talked about promoting me and so I quit. :-)

Afterward, when I was feeling stressed out, I could mentally travel back to those evenings and weekends and "shut down".

Travelling really opens your eyes to the way the rest of the world works. You will find that your little bubble is such a tiny part of things and that's a GOOD thing. You will make friends, meet people with completely different mindsets, see amazing places and experience totally random (good and bad) things. And if all you care about is business, I can tell you that after a year travelling I had a notebook stuffed full of start-up ideas I didn't even know where to begin. Travelling is AWESOME.

When people talk about travel in this sense, it's not about schlepping your bag from point A to B. I like this quote:

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." ~ Henry Miller

Question: did you volunteer alone? Did you code/write etc, that requires mostly working by yourself?

I think it depends on the type of volunteering work. If you are going to teach, or work in a garden with others - then you have much higher chances of actually interacting with people. But if you end up doing "tech" stuff, not so much, and it ends up feeling like work (or worse)

> Question: did you volunteer alone?

Nope.

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