Your next trip will probably suck.
And some of it might be your fault.
As many of you are prepping for your European summer vacations or spending endless hours on social media searching for your next travel destination, I’ll come out and say it: your next dream trip will not meaningfully change your life.
It will not even be that fun.
Once the trip is over, you’ll go back to your old life.
Worse, some of you will go back to a life that you found extremely sub-optimal and unexciting before your travels.
Objectively speaking, your upcoming trip will not expose you to new horizons.
It will not result in exciting personal transformation.
It will not even be that entertaining, because you will likely spend much of the trip looking at your phone instead of the place you traveled to see.
You may take a few snaps and upload them to your socials, but I hate to break it to you that fewer people than you think will care about them.
Once the trip is over, you’ll go back to your everyday life and continue complaining about the same old things.
You’ll complain about the politicians who govern your city.
You’ll complain about your annoying job.
You’ll complain about the friends who don’t get you.
And worse, you’ll have less money in your bank account, and you’ll be physically exhausted.
Yet, none of this will be entirely your fault.
I mean, some of it will be.
At the end of the day, during all this complaining, it will not occur to you that, despite complaining about politics, you can’t name many local politicians governing the place you call home.
You will disregard the fact that you don’t take part in community activities that build meaningful relationships with your surroundings.
You will ignore the fact that you have not once participated in a volunteering effort, whether cleaning parks and beaches or supporting local initiatives.
You’ll also conveniently overlook the fact that you don’t know the names of your neighbors.
You’ll brush aside the fact that you’re trapped in friendships sustained through WhatsApp messages and Instagram reels.
Yet, you’ll re-share on social media the latest statistic from some brain-dead podcast confirming that we are all experiencing declining health, political polarization, and a crisis of loneliness, while refusing to acknowledge that the solution to many of these challenges begins with becoming more invested in the places where we already are.
You have to be physically, emotionally, and psychologically invested in the place where you live to make friends, build connections, and participate in solving the problems you can’t stop complaining about.
There is literally no other way.
Today, the way we travel has changed.
What has changed is not simply the volume of travel we all undertake, but its place in our collective imagination.
Travel became one of the highest expressions of a life well-lived, a marker of success, sophistication, curiosity, and personal growth.
Today, we simply ask travel to do too much, and by doing so, we have stripped travel of all its spontaneity and serendipity.
On the contrary, and because of that, travel does the opposite of all the positive things we expect it to bring to our lives.
Communities are hollowed out to accommodate temporary visitors.
Local economies are re-organized to benefit international hotel chains, Airbnbs, and other forms of real estate investment.
Local cultures become inauthentic performances for the outside gaze.
Meanwhile, we, the visitors, by constantly chasing the next travel experience, incur the opportunity cost of not investing in our homes, neighborhoods, relationships, and even our personal health.
Just two decades ago, travel used to be rare and special.
Perhaps because it was so rare, travel also offered something extraordinary: a chance to step outside one’s immediate surroundings and encounter new ideas, cultures, and ways of living.
Today, by contrast, travel has become commonplace across different demographics.
Even for many who struggle to afford it, travel has become an expectation, almost a prerequisite for anyone aspiring to a full and meaningful life.
Students are expected to participate in study abroad programs. Career-oriented professionals are expected to hop on a plane for in-person meetings, often more than necessary.
Life is expected to be peppered with travel that is supposed to enhance our understanding of the world, despite the fact that itineraries are becoming increasingly copy-paste due to the algorithms deciding on our behalf what is the next best place to see.
So what can you do to be able to enjoy travel again?
You can simply travel less.
Unburden travel from all the unrealistic expectations you’ve placed on it, and travel will once again work its magic for you.
It will be exhilarating, enthralling, and life-changing.
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Liked this essay? Make sure you also check out My Case Against Travel. 🫶🫶
I am tracking changes in my relationship to travel, thanks to your writing. For two decades, I was profoundly bored by my home surroundings, a proto-typical American suburb. I turned to travel as a temporary solution to the stimulation I craved, as well as a kind of identity - I felt out of place and traveling with my family differentiated us from my neighbors who mostly alternated between trips to the beach and trips to Disney. I recently moved to a place that suits me much better (downtown Philadelphia) and I am so much more content that my urge to travel has quieted. I will still travel for sure, but I need it much less now.
After chemo many people ask me when i am taking a big trip or bucket list travel is expected. Upgrading my daily living putting the resources into our home so its sanctuary, hosting friends, deepening my relationships with people that is my idea of ideal life. Not dragging a suitcase thru cobblestone and being at my worse with my partner thru customs now with physical side effects. Life can be just as satisfying. Have done my share.