How Travel Changed My Life

Oh yes! For so many different reasons, and with so many different implications, travel has changed my life.

Travel has led me to change and has also, more or less strongly and more or less directly, changed my life. Reflecting on this widely popular phenomenon yet rarely detailed, I have identified several factors that have allowed travel to play the role of a driver, a catalyst, or an accelerator of change.

For me, the greatest catalyst for transformation, the best lever for change, is the daydreaming induced by movement. It allows me to revisit certain passages of my story (such as the loss of my father), or certain personal vulnerabilities and sensitivities (such as body image or my self-confidence).

But it's not just from behind the window of a bus that travel has a therapeutic effect on me. More active observation (as opposed to the more passive daydreaming) often allows me to put things into perspective.

Gaining a new outlook on life, values, ambitions, and projects... invites a reconsideration of certain choices. Returning to the essentials, to what truly matters. Rethinking my definition of happiness... and the kind of life I want to lead, without feeling trapped in the confines of a predetermined life on rails, like a shopping list (school - job - relationship - house - child...).

Traveling is about leaving your cocoon, your comfort zone as they often say. And it's not necessarily through grand self-transcending adventures that the sparks of change appear. Sometimes it's in completely mundane and unexpected moments...

I particularly remember a rainy afternoon in Argentine Patagonia when we were spending a few days with the children of the NGO. With two little girls under 10 years old, I played a board game that was very popular when I was a child: The Game of Life. Just thinking about it, the jingle from the commercial comes back to me: >.

The game unfolds with laughter and attempts to sneakily choose cards. Our tokens, colorful little cars, which we add pegs to as our virtual family grows, move towards the final space... And at the end of the game, I realize that I have won: I have materially the best situation (degree, money, big house...). But I'm the only car without any pegs in the back. The luck of the draw didn't give me a child.

As someone who doesn't chase professional success or money, I experienced a bittersweet victory. To be honest, it was a shock. We had already been talking for a few years about having a child without ever quite knowing when that would be. This game of Life felt like a wake-up call. To live, intensely, lovingly, and not to forget what truly matters to us.

The final driver of change while traveling, and not the least: encounters. Whether by chance or planned, you can never anticipate the impact an encounter will have on your life. And sometimes this impact can even remain dormant for days, weeks, months, or even years before revealing itself.

I have talked here and there, on the blog and social media, about some beautiful encounters, precious gifts from the roads. Like Robin Ruddock in Northern Ireland who allowed us to meet Ricardo Oliva Day in Patagonia. Or Christian and his mom in the Peruvian mountains. Or Antonio in El Salvador... All these people have left a mark on me more than I can ever explain.

So yes, for all these reasons and in all these ways, travel has changed my life. Yet, just a few years ago, I would have answered no if you asked me that question. No, I didn't believe that travel changed me. I said it only emphasized or accelerated self-discovery, without deeply altering my identity, my core remaining the same.

And in a way, both positions are true.

Travel does not change me completely: it merely waters certain seeds already present within me. But it changes me nonetheless, because it directs that water to make certain of these seeds bloom rather than others!

Everyone has their own levers of change, and for some of us, travel will be, at some point in our lives, a powerful aid. But not for everyone, not all the time, not in any way and not whenever. I detail this idea in the articles Travel Therapy and No, traveling does not solve all problems!.

I hope you enjoyed this article. It has been on my mind for a long time. But it was in the middle of the night, between two night feedings of Manoa that I wrote it on the (too) small keyboard of my phone.

When I embarked on my first journey, I never would have imagined the paths it would open. I never thought that travel would take such an important place in my life.

This is a topic that is close to my heart, and I am very curious to hear from you. Has travel changed your life? How? Why? Share your thoughts in the comments!