Why You Should Make a Solo Trip at Least Once in Your Life
Perhaps it’s the feeling of detachment, of self discovery and start again. Perhaps it’s the search from the distance and from the absence, from another look and a different mindset. Perhaps it’s the joy to make a stop along the way, understanding that the soul also needs to catch a breath. Or perhaps, it’s just the idea of finding yourself living stories that you’ll always be glad to tell.
I don’t know how to explain it, but there is certain magic about traveling by yourself and here are 7 big reasons why you should do it at least once in your lifetime.
- Start to flow
To travel means to leave behind certainties and being open to change, release the establishment and just start to flow. Also, it means to open and close cycles from other geographies, other perspectives and another point of view. During the journey we get lost and we find ourselves many times and many days, we travel because we want to get to know ourselves in depth. And when you do it alone, the answers start coming brighter along the way.
2. Find yourself in the other
Traveling also means walk through other worlds, listening to other languages and observing other ways of life. When we leave home, we begin our path to something different, something strange, something new. In some way, you find yourself in “the other”. In the trip, you will live odysseys, overcome battles, meet novel characters and, time to time, you will conquer feats that you’ll never forget. To travel is to write your own story, your own narrative.
3. Fill your eyes with memories
During the journey you will learn to live in the present and be surprised every time you find yourself living unreal situations, in fantastic locations, with a singular cast. Because to travel is to sail in a sea of opportunities and encounters, everyday is a fresh start. To travel is to open your mind, awake your spirit and fill your eyes with memories, the only thing that you will carry when you leave this earth.
4. The bad moments
But there will also be bad moments in the journey, the falls are part of the way. There will be days when doubts and questions will assault you, fears will appear and your ego will be present. There will be days without comforts, with shortages and blues, there will be days when the sun will not come. But that’s part of the journey, going through the bad times will make you stronger, humbler and wiser. At the end, the true traveller reinvents himself endless times during the the way. We travel to start again.
5. Traveling has to do with refuse to death
Some of us believe that the journey is infinite and that our life is a path in which we say hello and goodbye, in which we fall and get up again. From this point of view, traveling is a constant transformation that is hand woven in a spiral. As the Italian writer Claudio Magris says, “the journey always begins again, like existence […] Traveling has to do with deferring to death, because we travel not to arrive, but to travel”.
6. The journey to Ithaca
Others conceive life like a infinite journey to home. As the Greek poet Constantine Kavafis says, on this journey you will leave your homeland for a trip full of romances, encounters and misfortunes. That’s the way to Ithaca, wherever is Ithaca, whatever is home. Crossing the road you will be your best listener, your best buddy and your best partner, you’ll never walk alone.
7. Traveling is a gift to your soul
At the end, traveling is an enormous gift, a luxury and a joy. No matter which is our journey, it will be worth to thank the path, enjoy it and, most of all, to live it. Because at the end of this life we will leave empty-handed and we’ll just take the moments we collected along the way.
From my side, sometimes I like to make trips by myself and a few years ago I made a long solo trip that changed my life, it was a fun ride and a great therapy. Indeed, I feel that I’ve been traveling all of my life and if I had to choose one more time, I would do it again, I would always travel again.
