Being independent travelers sometimes has end points, the start and the finish. We tell of the sights we have visited, the streets and houses that we have traversed, the tastes, we have savored. Yet the real nature of a trip in such vein, and most enduring and basically life changing factor about it, is not in the ends themselves, but is in the postulates to which one must resort to successfully find ones way between ends. Travelling to get to know the world alone, by one-self, is a course in life that is difficult, and is a real one-life course. The program is not written; and the classrooms vary; sometimes a busy railroad station in a strange country, sometimes a smoky mountainside at sunrise; sometimes even a prison cell; and the teaching is so elementary, that it can, and must, be built into all the details of the life you resume. The trip does not mark the end of the journey; this is just the start of the application. When internalized as principles of living, the independent travel emerges as a very effective guideline of exploring career and relationships, as well as the subtle geography of our inner world.
Radical self-reliance is at the roots of independent travel. No committee to call, no manager to push it up the chain, no partner to fall back on, you are on your own in a country where you do not speak the language, your plans are in ruins and your progress is hampered. It is totally, and at times frighteningly, up to you. This brings out the need to nurture a permanent and strong faith in your judgment. You are taught to listen to yourself, make choices decisively based on incomplete information, and take responsibility without blame on the outcome of the decisions. This is the complete opposite of organized, usually team-based, life that we have in the modern-day workplace. A piece of work could take several stages of approval in an office in Lahore and a piece would be directed by the unity of a group. Although such is worthwhile, it in addition to a certain extent erodes and waters down personal bindings. When it is realized that the principle of self-reliance should be applied back in the same corporate environment, it does not imply that one shifts towards being a renegade who does not want to work with anyone. It is about being the individual who really owns his or her domain; who takes action to spot problems and offer solutions rather than being told what to do, and who is confident enough to make a decision and defend it. It is being that co-worker who when news of an unfortunate drawback breaks out, not only goes to inform the supervisor of the mishap, but has already considered three possible ways of fixing it. You carry the silent power of one that is aware that he is/ she can figure things out on his/ her own (ex post).
Coming along with self reliance is the concept of agile adaptation. No matter how carefully you work out a travel plan it will never come in contact with reality intact. A railway strike, a sudden downpour in monsoons, a festival which puts a whole city to sleep, these are not exceptions; these are the rule. The independent traveler soon discovers that when one sticks to the itinerary it is a sure way away to frustration. Being successful does not mean sticking to the plan; it is simply focused on being flexible to leave it. This attitude can be an effective remedy to the planning cycles of professional and personal life that is usually inflexible. We involve ourselves in making five-year plans, quarterly targets, and elaborate to-do lists and then get into massive stress when life which always does not keep up with our plans. To use principle of agile adaptation one must treat these plans loosely, take them as a compass but not a map. At a career sense, it implies that one is willing to accept a horizontal promotion, which has more learning value than the promotion itself. It involves not viewing a project being cancelled as a failure, but rather as a situation whereby you become able to switch your skills towards a new, more in demand company requirement. Personally, it is the grace to realize that marriage timing, house buying schedule or any other thing you want to do in life is not a requirement but a wish and the unanticipated turnings are usually the ones that get us to a much more interesting place.
The extreme simplicity of this life is a valuable lesson in economical travel: a lesson in the way we spend and what is really important in life. When the only container you have is a single backpack and everything you have belongs in it, the relationship you share with objects gets changed at its core. You are taught the clear cut difference between a need or a want. You find out that the third pair of shoes does not make a difference in this regard to take it as a physical burden. It is not asceticism; nor is it bound up in intentionality. Each thing has to justify itself on its own merit. When this is applied at the home setting, it is revolutionising. It is not about looking to what we have, how much we spend or even what we are committed to and just asking ourselves that simple question which is, Does this have a weight to it? This causes the automatic clearing of your home, your timetable and your money. You eliminate the spending of money on affordable, short time products and start investing in an experience or in things of good quality which will really bring you value in your life. When you live in a place like Lahore with its colorful markets and the sexy consumer culture it is tempting to fall into a pattern of possession. The mindset of the traveler gives a strong filter. You purchase the custom hand-made leather footwear of the local craftsman not because this is the style of the year, but because you appreciate the work done, and such shoes can last a long time. You invest your money in a weekend getaway to the mountains in the northern part of the country rather than the hottest new gadget since you have discovered that the rate of investment in collective experiences is infinite.
One of the most important lessons I have learned out on the road is possibly proactive problem-solving. There is never-ending flow of minor logistics problem in independent travel. What is my means of transport to my hostel in this airport? How can I purchase a local sim. How do I order in the restaurant whose menu is in a different writing? They are not mere experiences; they will force you to pursue information, to become resourceful, and not afraid of making yourself look ridiculous. You learn to ask a question, to use translation apps, to draw pictures, to do everything so that the problem standing in front of you could be solved. The above active practical nature can be directly applied to all spheres of life. It is the change between lamenting over an issue and actually researching on how to find the solution. It is about trying your level best in sorting out house administration without calling in a professional, as in paying personal taxes or renewing insurance cover, with the same resourcefulness that found you a bus station in the rural outskirts of Cambodia. It is the denial of being a submissive prey of fate. It is the silent assurance that resides in the knowledge that you do not necessarily possess the answer at this given moment but you are definitely competent to discover it.
The process of getting a story about/across various cultures generates an intense and subtle empathy. Being introduced to another culture by reading a book is an intellectual experience; experiencing it first-hand, even on a temporarily basis, is a humane one. You are shown that logic which rules your own life is not universal. You witness that other people experience happiness, form community, and make sense differently than yours. This experience breaks prejudice, and exchanges it with curiosity. You carry this idea back home and you practice on your own relationships. You can better the trait of listening and are more ready to understand a point of view and then to evaluate it. When you talk to one of your family members or even to a friend whom you do disagree with, you cease trying to win the argument and actually begin trying to see where he/she is coming form. You understand that their way of thinking, just as the way of a different culture, depends on a set of value and life experience that does not match to yours. This enables you to be a better and sympathetic co-worker in the workplace. You are able to learn differently why your teammates act that way, and learn how to make your way through each and every type of personality that comprises an office scene.
Last but not least, due to independent travel, you will learn to keep wonder and seek adventure in ordinary life. Arriving in a new location everything is interesting to you, the architecture, the names on the street and how people are dressed. The mind of a traveler is that of being in heightened awareness all the time. It is the challenge to apply the same sense of awareness in your hometown surroundings. It is the application of this principle that carries with it the war of fighting the perception blindness of routine within consciousness. It implies going the alternative route home after work, you know, just to see what there is. It is meaning going to the local museum that you live close to yet you have never entered. It is when you sit in some local park in Lahore, and instead of scrolling down your phone, you actually see the light picking portion in the banyan tree, or you hear the special tone of a vendor or you see the tiling work on a nearby wall you never noticed. The knowledge is that adventure is not a geographical thing but a perceptual capability. With these principles, you make the journey with you everywhere. The most desirable destination turns out to be life itself, and you are a very experienced self-guided sightseer who handles it with skill, wisdom, and endless curiosity.
The viewpoint of this experienced adventurer does not disappear after the vacation or sunburn like a tan. It becomes a part of the fabric of your soul so that it is no longer a collection of principles you apply consciously but rather an operating system in terms of which you perceive the world and by which you see it. The first, intentional step of viewing your hometown with fresh eyes becomes a lasting way of viewing the world continuously, forever changing your attitude towards challenges and opportunities well after you have placed your pack back into the closet. With such integration comes adoption of more subtle, more entrenched philosophies, foremost among them will be equality of extolling voluntary hardship as a stimulant towards growth. What the independent traveler, usually by bitter experience, comes to know, is that the path most smooth is not always the most rewarding. You also recall the choice to trudge one day after another through the mountains in the heavy rains when you could have sat back and relaxed and taken the one-hour flight, and you remember how this little bit of blister and tiredness was a worthwhile cost in comparison to the mind-boggling panoramas of the dawn and the feeling of having conquered the mountains.
When you take this principle to apply once again to the structured comfort of your life in Lahore it must mean that you are energetically rejecting that universal human attraction to ease and comfort. The professional setting makes it the driving force of your development. You begin to view difficulties not as enemies, but as a way to get stronger. You take on the complicated, muddy job that no one wants, the one with the bad client, or the job with uncertain end result. It is because your experiences in traveling have taught you that this is the place of the actual learning. You are certain that passing through that project will develop even more commendable capabilities and strengths than one year of smooth sailing doing simple tasks. Applied to your personal life, such a principle may involve a challenging new practice, such as studying a musical instrument, preparations to a marathon, or learning an artisan craft that requires a lot of practice. It is the preference of the pain associated with struggling as a beginner instead of the passivity of watching the TV. It means making the conscious choice to condition your mind and your emotions to develop the kind of callouses that you allow your spirit to identify and develop at will so that when the rest of the world hands you the kind of involuntary adversiry that it is sure to do, you have enough spirit to see it through with grace.
This ease at being hard gets one ever naturally to the mastering of the art of the pivot, which, to put it crudely enough, is a deeper enacting of that agile adaptation you developed on the road. The first lesson was on flexibility of a daily schedule. The refined use involves courage of embracing flexibility to the big story of your life. On a fundamental level the independent traveler has shown themselves, and others that they can begin at nothing and will not only survive, but flourish. This underlying security means that the possibility of a complete life change is not so much a life-threatening step into the abyss but is rather a calculative and thrilling next move. When you have the confidence to move into a city where you don not know anyone, where you have no idea how the place struggles, then the notion of changing careers becomes way less intimidating. You also start thinking of your ability as part of your capacity to that particular job, but as a transferable boquet of skills and abilities (problem solving, communication, resourcefulness) that could be used in any new activity.
This attitude also spills to other areas. It tells you your relationships through which you are granted the capacity to acknowledge when a long-term friendship or partnership with someone does not serve you anymore or who you are or who you wish to be. It gives the confidence to swing out of an comfortably unhappy status towards an ambiguous and possibly more true future. This is not going wild, but a polished outlook of risk assessment. The traveler realizes that the risk of failure is not the most important one, the risk of stagnation is the most important. The agonies of separating with what is familiar are compared to the gradual agony of corrosive suffering of staying with a life that does not correspond to a person. You are helped to trust your capacity to deal with the emotional territory of a new beginning no less resourcefully than you had already coped with the physical territory of a foreign land.
This way of thinking after a certain amount of time makes you also completely redefine your idea of what wealth is. A simple trick of learning how to live cheerfully out of a backpack becomes a mature philosophy of value. You realize that real gold cannot be valued in the amount of goods, gathered but rather in the amount of experience, knowledge, and valuable relationships. Your financial planning changes also. You may still have some traditional ambitions, however, they are accompanied with a passion so intense that you want desperately to save in order to have things that make your soul rich instead of just the home. You set priorities on a plan to learn a new language, a course on pottery, a second and maybe briefer sabbatical, or making memorable experiences with your family and friends. It is a non-violent but resounding movement against rebel in a land that has very strong and vibrant material culture such as the one in Lahore. It is the fact that the pleasure of having a meal shared with the loved ones in a busy food street is more rewarding than an ephemeral sensation of having a new acquisition.
Autonomy ends up as the final currency. The traveler has experienced the real freedom and that makes the game a difference in the image of a good job. The best pay is not the only goal anymore. You start comparing earnings with such things as flexibility, leaves, and the ability to work at a remote location. You may purposely take a lower paying job in order to earn a working life with more of your own time to go with it. It is so because you have understood that time is the only resource that cannot be replaced and wealth is the independence to spend time in a way that truly means something to you. Moreover since you have discovered the generosity of the uncaring and unknown in distant lands, you come to realize the value of social capital. You take an active interest in the development of good community relationships at home, taking interest in mentoring junior staff members, supporting local traders and businesses, caring about being a good neighbour. It is a system of people caring and supporting one another, a kind of wealth that gives a security and a bliss you would not be able to achieve with money.
Then you come to a stage where you are integrated and no longer think in terms of doing these principles. It has just been turned your instincts. The line between traveling and home person fades. The patience and empathy you gained during the attempt to speak your mind across a language barrier are also part of the reason why you tend to approach a complicated negotiation in the workplace instinctively. It is that instinct which teaches you that your natural response to unexpected challenge of life is to be undisturbed by it, and resourceful. You could say that the practice of storytelling, picked up back in the hostel common rooms when you were telling stories to your fellow backpackers, will come naturally to the way that you take charge of a team, sell an idea to a customer, or communicate with a friend. You no longer have to remind yourself to be inquisitive or to seek adventure in the ordinariness of life but your eyes are now permanently set to the same channel. It is not really an ending journey since the attitude that it created is now the prism through which you view your entire life. It was not simply to see the world, you know. To create a way to live in the world that would be more resilient, more compassionate, and more deliberate as well as more alive. You have still made of your own life the greatest of journeys, the most continually interesting spot, deserving (as you well know) a whole life of investigation.
