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Why Traveling the World Will Change Your Life
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.
I’m watching this boat pass by the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, and today I’m thinking about travel, how travel has changed my life, and essentially why everybody should travel the world, experience new things, and go new places.
I think it’s one of the most impactful things that I’ve ever experienced in my life—being out there in the world, going beyond the horizon, exploring the unknown.
When I zoom in all the way toward that bridge and look out into the distance, I think about what’s beyond the horizon.
What’s out there?
Look at this boat moving along, going out there.
It’s just an inspiring thought to think about how open the world is and just how much there is to do, to see, to explore, and to photograph.
To be out there and experience new things is what shapes your reality.
Travel Opens Your Perception
If you’re only in one place for the rest of your life and only have this one way of engaging with the day and engaging with life, you’re going to have a clouded or closed perception of what’s possible.
Think of the benefits of traveling.
Initially, the first thing I can consider is just having that sort of openness to new people.
When you have openness to new people, new cultures, new religions, new faiths, and new ways of life, you find more appreciation for everybody and everything.
One of the first things I did in my travels was travel throughout Israel and Palestine. I traveled on both sides, and this completely changed my mind about how to think about life.
Of course, there’s so much conflict and so much strife in these places.
But what I’ve realized is that despite the differences, we’re all kind of the same.
We’re All More Similar Than Different
I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had throughout all of my traveling.
We’re all pretty much the same.
Of course, we all have our nuances and things that make us unique, but we all still have a tendency to feel joy, to feel pain, to be happy, to be sad, to be mad, to be glad.
We all have the same sort of flawed human nature despite where you are physically in the world, what religion you subscribe to, or what nationality or ethnicity you are.
We’re all more similar than dissimilar.
That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned throughout my journey.
What Happens When You Come Home?
One of the thoughts that I have is that once you’ve experienced a lot, once you’ve gone out there and explored the world, when you return home, it feels really, really weird.
Because now I feel like I don’t need to travel.
I’ve gone to so many places and experienced so many things—from Israel to Palestine, to my roots in Italy, to the slums of Mumbai, to the mountains of Mexico City, to the lakes of Hanoi, to Costa Rica, Central America, Belize, and all over the place.
Since I was a little kid, I’ve been traveling and visiting my family in the south of Italy.
Even after my recent trip to Tokyo, what I realized is:
There is no better place than where you are now.
When I’ve experienced all these things, the thought becomes: What if where you are right now is paradise after all?
I think when you detach from this need for novelty, you can start truly thriving.
It’s normal to seek novelty, to go to new places and experience new things.
But ultimately, I now feel like there’s so much novelty just in my hometown.
I’ve almost reached this point where I feel like I don’t need to travel anymore. I don’t have that same desire or that same sort of wanderlust.
Of course, I still have it in me. I’m still curious about everything. It’s not like I’ve seen everything. There’s so much more to see.
But after traveling and experiencing things externally, I think now I’m starting to travel more internally.
Traveling Inside Your Own Mind
I’m trying to do more reading and contemplating and essentially just thinking about the experiences I’ve had and how they’ve given me this sort of paradigm shift.
Because with these new experiences, the way that I engage and show up each day in my own hometown has changed.
Despite the external world being the same and me walking the same way, I’ve changed.
My way of thinking about life is completely different now.
I can kind of just travel inside my own mind and find infinite ways to return to the day and live in the same space.
Your imagination is really powerful as well.
You don’t really have to go far.
The act of creation is interesting because you can create your own world no matter where you are.
But I’m also not going to lie. I think this way of being where I don’t need to travel endlessly anymore is due to the fact that I’ve already done that thing.
So maybe the simple message is:
You’ve got to go out there and do that thing.
Go out there and visit wherever it is that you’ve wanted to visit. Allow that experience to reshape the way that you show up and engage with your everyday life wherever you are.
There’s a power to traveling.
It can reshape the way you think about things, and when you return home, you’re a different person each time.
I think that’s why I ultimately love traveling.
It forces you to change.
Living Off the Grid in Zambia
I think of my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, Africa, living off the grid with no running water or electricity.
When I arrived in the village, my host father presented me with a goat hanging from a tree. I slaughtered it, and we feasted all week.
I had to wake up and gather water with a bucket from a well, go to a farm, pick out a chicken, slaughter it, and cook it.
These different ways I’ve engaged with the experiences I’ve had traveling are unlike anything else.
I remember showing up to a Seventh-day Adventist church camp with nothing but empty land.
Then, hand in hand with other brothers and people, erecting a church with sticks and tarps, creating tents with poles and found objects, and sleeping under the stars for two weeks.
I lived under a thatched roof for over a year.
I experienced baptisms in the lake and watched funerals unfold. I gathered in churches where people mourned and prayed.
Those experiences gave me a way of thinking about life that is much more rooted in what’s most meaningful, which I find to be God, family, and sharing land.
What Is Actually Meaningful?
When you’re off the grid and you really aren’t connected to any government or bureaucracy and you’re living under a thatched roof, you start to see what’s most meaningful in life.
None of the material things that we acquire will provide that sense of joy that God and family can provide.
When I was in the villages and witnessed the people, they seemed happier than the people I personally see in the cities in America with all the abundance that we have.
Despite the lack of amenities and living under a thatched roof, these people were thriving.
They had a relationship to God.
They had a relationship to something that provided their life with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose, which was creating family and sharing land.
Everybody had their own role to play. Everybody was making their individual sacrifice each day and providing for the greater good of their tribe.
There are over 70 tribes in Zambia, and I was a surrogate member of the Bemba tribe.
I spoke the local language.
I learned a new language. I learned new skills. I learned how to fish farm. I dug ditches and built ponds. I interacted with the school, created a basketball court, hosted small meetings with farmers and youth, and created a gym.
I did so many things during my time off the grid.
Because I’ve experienced those things, now when I’m here in the States, everything is set into perspective.
I’m much more grounded.
Travel Teaches Gratitude
I remember going to play soccer at the school, and none of the kids were wearing shoes. They were barefoot.
I tried to participate playing barefoot, and my feet were blistered, battered, and bloody that night.
They could only afford to have one pair of shoes.
They had one pair of shoes for school. They were lucky if they had two for sports.
That reminds me to just be grateful to have a roof over my head, meat in my fridge, and clean water that I can drink without having to boil it, add iodine, and draw it from a well.
We have the ability to reshape the way that we think about life through traveling.
I think that’s much more impactful than sitting around reading anything.
But once you come home from these experiences, then to start reading, contemplating, and thinking more deeply is wise.
You Don’t Need to Go Far
From here, it feels like infinite potential.
Infinite adventure.
Despite the lack of novelty, I feel like I can travel inside my mind daily just here in Philly.
And I really think you don’t need to go far to experience new things.
While I encourage you to go out there and explore the world, just remember you can do it close to you.
You can get on a train.
You can get on a bus.
You can go for a walk in a new place.
Traveling is something you can do externally and also internally in your mind.
It Feels Like I’ve Lived 1,000 Lifetimes
My experiences traveling are one of the things I’m most grateful for in life.
My life feels so abundantly beautiful because, with all those experiences, I can think back and recall the photographs.
I can relive those memories through the imagery.
Or I can just have these stories tucked away in my mind.
There’s infinite novelty within my mind.
It feels like I’ve lived 1,000 lifetimes.
Because I’ve experienced so many different things, I genuinely feel like this evening I could die and I would be completely fulfilled with the way that I experienced my life.
And it’s because I’ve gone out there and I’ve done these things.
Maybe that’s worth contemplating.
I’m 30 years old, and I genuinely feel this way.
That’s all I have to say.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.
Peace.
DANTE SISOFO · · dantesisofo.com/why-traveling-the-world-will-change-your-life/
