The Good, the Bad, and the Liminal

What makes saying goodbye to friends we make on the road so hard? Why are the relationships we, as solo travelers, make so strong in such little time? And what is it that drives those few seemingly subdued people that hit the road into a completely exaggerated or distorted version of themselves?

Perhaps it all comes back to the liminality that we feel when traveling alone.

Back in university, I took a course on tourism. It was in that course that I was first introduced to liminality. Most university concepts tend to fade immediately after completing final exams, yet liminality survived the purge of knowledge in my head somehow. I found it fascinating back then, and since, tend to think about the idea of liminality quite a bit. And while a complicated topic, it's an essential piece in understanding solo travel sentiment—I'll try my best to explain it here without the credentials of an anthropologist or psychologist.

Liminality, when defined directly, is a sort of "in-between" state. At home, we are wholly a part of our culture. We work, we learn, and we live the quotidian life. In finding a routine at home, we find comfort in the nuances and undertones that define our own culture. Surrounded by a community of friends and acquaintances, we recognize the social constructs that influence our decisions, our actions, and our self-image. Again, we are actively involved in our greater home culture. So what happens when we travel?

When we travel, we leave our home environment behind and enter a new, normally rather distinct, one. The difference now is that we do not become an integrated part of this new environment in the same way we are engrained in our home environments. No matter how hard the traveler tries to "be a local", they are still an outsider, merely an observer, and ultimately just passing through. Subconsciously, we feel like this version of ourselves is only temporary—a sort of limbo period. It's this feeling of not being in our home cultures nor belonging to the culture we're visiting (i.e. the sense of being in-between) that develops the sentiment of liminality. And that sentiment is powerful.

Anyone that has traveled for an extended period of time is familiar with how rapidly friendships can develop over the course of one or two days. I believe this to be a matter of authentic individuals meeting other authentic individuals. It's in these alien places that we're more deeply-aligned versions of ourselves as we drop the pretenses that confine parts of our personalities back in our home cultures. These pretenses can be evident in our insecurities, social pressures, or even just the attraction to conformity that causes us to mirror the mannerisms of the people around us back at home. It bends our own sense of self into a slightly disjointed one, a self leaning too heavily on the thoughts and beliefs of our close community. Traveling (especially solo) erases all of that for a moment.

When solo traveling, everyone is so wildly different. We meet people from both our host culture and other travelers hailing from all corners of the globe. Conversations take on a different form than small talk, sports, or what so-and-so did last night at the local watering hole. There's not quite anything to adapt to or mimic culturally either. In between many different cultures and norms, there's nothing to grasp onto as "normal". We realize the only things we can rely on are our own instincts, interests, and values to guide our actions. These pieces of self become more evident each day on the road as boredom is confronted and new discoveries of the world around us are made. We become a more candid version of ourselves in no time. That same self-alignment brings out the authenticity of self in those around us too. And relationships tend to form much quicker when both parties are more open to sharing the real versions of themselves.

Indeed, self-alignment is truly a beautiful aspect of liminality. But liminality is a powerful force because it can influence both positive and negative behaviors alike. Liminality allows us to be either better or worse versions of the selves we leave behind in our home cultures. This choice to be better or worse can be made multiple times a day. Sometimes we opt to be a more pure person. Other times a more hedonistic version. With temporal reality, which is what liminality generates, consequences feel minimal. No one really knows us here, no one back home really knows what we're up to, and we'll be leaving this place in a few days anyways. Truly, what could be the consequences?

We tell ourselves that this new version of self, this new personality if you will, is only for the duration of our travels—once home, we'll get back to being ourselves. And that part is probably true if we want it to be. Though it would be foolish to ignore the truth that, in a liminal space like traveling, we're probably closer to our true selves than we are back at home. We just don't recognize that person as us.

The solo traveler is only held accountable by themself. It's an empowering and crippling notion all in one. Perhaps the best way to bend liminality to serve ourselves is to strike out with an endgame in mind. For example, I remember my first few days on the road as I became more familiar with the full range of freedom I had. It was almost jarring, the wealth of opportunities I had in front of me. With the context of my home culture absent, there was nothing holding me back from doing whatever I wanted. Sensing this to be a chance at self-development rather than self-digression, I decided my best opportunity to take advantage of liminality would be to set some goals for growth while I traveled.

In setting goals for the values I wish to strengthen on the road, I found an anchor to ground my actions and accountability when traveling solo. As months go on, while I do adhere to these values and higher aspirations of self each day, I've learned to not enforce them so rigidly that I shut my eyes to a new perspective either. After all, that could awaken a new set of values I never knew existed in the first place. And what would be the point of traveling if we don’t pick up on those?