What A Year Of Travel Taught Me About Finding Lasting Happiness
What A Year Of Travel Taught Me About Finding Lasting Happiness
We all want to be happy and for that happiness to last.
I found that travelling for a year gave me better insight into what I need to achieve this elusive, lasting happiness.
Most will think I’m talking about the freedom to travel for longer, the excitement of exploring new worlds or turning my back on the nine-to-five and responsibility.
While these were a huge part of the joy that came from my journeys, there was another philosophical element involved.
A long-held belief of mine, about finding lasting happiness was put to the ultimate test. And it turned out to be true. Its importance only second to my basic human needs.
To explain what I mean, I need to start with the story of why my husband and I decided to upend our lives to travel.
Alex and I had built a decent life together.
Both in our 30s, we had good jobs, lived in a beachside apartment and had some nice things. In 2018 we had a beautiful wedding and I wore my dream dress.
The next logical step was to buy a house, not to quit our jobs and tour the world for a year.
Yet the desire to travel was too strong. Embracing our philosophy of experiences over things felt right. The house could wait while we made an investment in our long-term happiness.
So, before the end of 2018, we put our careers on hold and began packing up our lives.
As excited as I was about the trip, I knew that a year overseas meant making some lifestyle adjustments and forgoing some comforts.
This quickly became clear when whittling my possessions down to a large backpack.
Practical clothing needed to take priority over looking good. Items that would enhance my experiences became my focus. I wasn’t going to be hiking without thermals in Patagonia so that I could look nice on a Saturday night in Santiago.
As a lover of fashion and beauty, it felt like a sacrifice, but I had no choice.
The next compromise was where we stayed.
We slept in some basic rooms, some ok rooms and some nice rooms. But mostly basic. Especially in South and Central America.
This was an important concession that allowed us to travel for longer and spend more money experiencing new places. So again, I had to accept it.
However, after a month of living on the road and sleeping in some pretty basic accommodation, something interesting happened.
I became comfortable with basic rooms and wearing plain, functional clothing. I also stopped wearing makeup, never did my hair and hardly ever wore either of my ‘nice’ outfits.
New clothes weren’t in the budget, so shopping was reserved for practical items. And I didn’t care.
A few months into the trip, my day pack was stolen on a bus ride in Chile. After the initial shock and annoyance wore off, it was amazing how fast I let the bag and its contents go.
My travel insurance meant that they could all be replaced, but I was in no rush. Replacing my favourite lip gloss didn’t seem too pressing now that I was in Peru, eating ceviche.
It was clear that things were losing their power over me.
I had become less concerned about how I appeared to others and had begun focusing more on what I was getting out of each day.
I was experiencing new cultures, hiking across spectacular landscapes and tasting delicious foods, free from the self-conscious constraints of the superficial. I felt liberated and much happier.
I’d always suspected that experiences and not things were the key to finding lasting fulfilment, but I’d never had the opportunity to truly put the theory to the test.
The truth is I’d always been a minimalist at heart, but had struggled to put it into practice. The lure of beautiful things had always been too strong.
In the end, it was my love of travel that pushed me to wholeheartedly embrace experiences and let go of unnecessary things. And in doing that I found a way to live my life that makes me happier.
You’re probably wondering – has this happiness lasted?
Well, we are now in Australia again, putting our lives back together and 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone, including us.
Coronavirus has threatened people’s most basic human needs and has further highlighted how much experiences bring to our lives, now that so many of them are unavailable to us.
I can tell you that despite all of this, an incredible experience or moment from my trip comes to mind every day, bringing a smile to my face or prompting a story to share.
These joy-filled memories will stay with me all my life.
Something that I hardly ever think about, that causes me no angst at all, is the stolen backpack in Chile. If anything, it’s a story to tell and one more piece of proof that it’s experiences and not things that are key to my lasting happiness.
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