As I move around, I tend to philosophize over the greater themes that characterize my passings between places. Long-term travel has a medley of benefits that have, assuredly, been addressed tirelessly in my writing. Perhaps my favorite one, though, is the microscope living transitively puts on the behaviors of those I sit, stand, walk, run, swim, sleep, and eat next to. In the most recent months, more thoughts regarding the interactions between people arose for me.

Coming from a guy with zero background in anthropology nor sociology nor psychology, this piecemeal of mediations is, at best, highly thoughtful and, at worst, incomplete. Frankly, these themes are only those I’ve read or learned about in passing that reappear in my mind as I experience them. Although a bit whimsical, reflecting on the intangible changes in character within myself and those I travel alongside is what I’m on the road to witness in the first place - that and the act of realizing those improvements and changes in myself eventually. So, here’s my own medley of meditations:

Uncertainty Exposure

In the health field, there are concepts known as “acute” and “chronic“ risk. Keeping it light, acute risk is generally perceived as alarming, highly-dangerous, and potentially harmful in the near future. Chronic risk, on the other hand, is a risk perceived to be ever-present, can warrant appropriate amounts of caution, and, while threatening, is not so much so that it should be completely avoided. The interesting piece of this comes when an individual is exposed long enough to an acute risk to become desensitized. After a certain amount of time of exposure (depending on the individual), that acute risk subconsciously transitions into a chronic risk.

For a more concrete example, think of it like the recent pandemic: when the outbreak first began, lack of information and the appearance of a new, potentially harmful threat plunged the world into extreme health measures to prevent, mitigate, and avoid the risk. Yet, what happened over the next few months? As communities dealt with the presence of the risk of COVID-19, people slowly started to emerge from their homes, visiting stores with fewer gloves and Clorox and socializing in small groups again. Risk exposure, i.e. the constant desensitization of a person to an acute risk, collapsed COVID-19 into a chronic risk. Fast-forward to today, and it’s hard to tell there was ever a time we hunkered down at home. Unless you’re on a city bus in São Paulo. That risk is still pretty darn acute apparently.

On the road, uncertainty is like a risk. Moving from place to place without much of a plan generates an immense amount of uncertainty. Each new arrival begs questions about the novel environment. What am I going to do here? Is this place going to be safe? Who might I meet here? Am I staying nine nights or one? All of these curiosities create an exciting, stimulating, and unknown set of emotions in the first few days of a place. The uncertainty is acute. As time wears on though, streets become more navigable, the food less strange, and the shopkeeper more familiar. It is that exact reduction of the unfamiliar that I call uncertainty exposure.

Uncertainty exposure is like risk exposure. The more time you spend with uncertainty, the less acute it becomes. The more time you spend in one place, the less uncertain it becomes. It’s this cycle of novelty over time transforming into the more common that causes many long-term travelers to continue to move; the constant pursuit of uncertainty is what gives solo travel its charm after all.

Cognitive Dissonance & Personal Legends

Everyone has that one friend that reads The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho one time and, suddenly, only speaks in terms of omens and their “Personal Legend” as is called in the novel. It was a book I put off all too long, but upon having the third person in a handful of weeks recommend it to me, I finally picked it up. Having recently finished it, I am now “that one friend”.

In psychology, there’s a term coined “cognitive dissonance”; simplistically, it’s the misalignment between one’s beliefs, thoughts, and desires, and their actual actions and behaviors. This inconsistency in thought and action evokes feelings of guilt, confusion, unhappiness, etc. While it may seem extreme in theory, cognitive dissonance can manifest in many, subtle ways on a normal day. Someone wishes to be healthier and exercise more, but, in reality, doesn’t go to the gym, and, in turn, feels less so and guilty for not going. Or, for the FOMO-heads out there, going out with friends for the night on an empty [body] battery because it would kill them to miss out otherwise.

In The Alchemist, the main character embarks on a life-altering journey across North Africa in search of his Personal Legend. That being, the life mission that he was created to do. Rather than continuing as a shepherd, he leaves behind the comforts of home and follows the path that the “omens” of the world were showing him. In this story, author Paulo Coelho drills home the idea that, when one wants or believes in something so much as to discard past comforts to pursue it, “all the universe conspires in helping [them] achieve it”.

The cases in which one finds consistency in what they believe they should be doing and what they are actually doing are the cases in which an individual feels more balanced, content, and accomplished. This alignment erases the negative feelings of cognitive dissonance. And, similar to The Alchemist, it’s in these moments of life, of alignment between thought and action, that I find the universe does, indeed, conspire in favor of growth and advancement in life - even if that growth and advancement manifests in remarkably unexpected ways.

Hostels & Communitas

Hostels are an interesting way to observe a grand array of human behavior in a relatively small space. After getting through the Big Three Questions ("Where are you from?", "How long are you traveling for?", "Where are you going next?"), conversations can unexpectedly and rapidly turn toward the deeper depths of topics like lifestyle preferences, character-altering stories, and personal definitions of happiness. Without many of the original cultural pretenses that riddle conversations (gossip, sports, work) with people from home, travelers are inadvertently directed towards the themes of life that their fellow nomadic peers can relate to. Even if they’ve only known each other for a handful of hours.

This rapid forming of relationships within a loosely similar stage of life has a name: communitas. Defined in anthropology, communitas is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals hailing from distinct cultural backgrounds come together and form an informal community. Sharing the common stage of life in which each member is traveling for an extended period to learn new things about the world and themselves, other previously-relevant traits like age, personal finances, and societal status fade away.

In spaces such as hostels, communitas grows unhindered, fertilized by a shared perception of liminality and curiosity. Communitas is the key ingredient to learning new lessons about others’ cultures and your own in turn. It’s the basis for the fast-tracked friendships solo travelers form amongst themselves. And, in certain cases, it can assuage anxieties evoked by taking off on an unconventional life path by introducing a road warrior to thousands of others walking a similar one.