Solo Travel and The Quest for Meaning

I was working at a Buddhist Monastery in Southern France when Andrew, a fellow American work-awayer explained his conundrum.

“I want to leave the monastery but I don’t know what I’d do or where I’d go... Solo-travel sounds cool and all but, what do you even do? Like when you’re not sightseeing or something, seriously, what do you do?”

No one had ever asked me that before. People were curious about the crazy adventure stories and hectic mishaps but never asked about the moments in between; they wanted to hear about when I trespassed on the Great Wall of China, not about the times when I had no one to talk to, nothing to do, and nowhere to go.

Solo travel, and travel in general, can be invigorating but it can also be super weird. Seeing beautiful places, meeting cool people and eating good food feel like epic activities a lot of the time. But when all the excitement of the day dies down, or your new friends leave to their next city, or you just have a moment of silence, you start to wrestle with that feeling of being lost, that surprisingly heavy burden of not having a specific aim or purpose.

What is the meaning of life when we strip away all of those things that we decided give us “purpose” like succeeding in a career, buying a house, or creating a family? That all can be meaningful of course, but most of the world follows those paths on autopilot, because they are time-tested quick fixes to feeling a sense of purpose. They help us fill the void that comes with the truth that we are all alone and at least somewhat lost in the world.

What happens when you get lost on purpose? When you wander with no specific objective other than to have a good time?

When you don’t seek to “do” or “create” or “build,” but just to observe, connect, and experience?

Life becomes about your senses. The small observations that pique your interest or weird you out or make you smile. You notice little things in a way you’ve never allowed yourself to before.

You live for intimacy. You seek out some semblance of connection in a place where you’re so foreign, so you savor the casual conversations and allow yourself to be vulnerable in new friendships.

And you walk. A lot. Like 20,000 steps in a day, a lot. Sometimes you walk with a place to go and sometimes completely aimlessly until your feet hurt and you turn around.

Always in your backpack? A book. To fill those moments where you just don’t know what else to do. For when you’re waiting for the museum to open or you caught yourself feeling awkward at your table for one.

You eat and you drink and you try sweets and you get coffee. You get three espressos a day because you’re in Europe and they’re 1 Euro and what else do you have to do. You drink wine at 11 am because that’s what the Italian construction workers are doing. And you try the strange looking foods you’ve never seen before and you love them or hate them but when you love them, you feel like you just discovered food for the first time.

You listen to street music and watch people dance. Sometimes you get the courage to join the dance circle or the nice old man in China invites you to be his partner for a tango.

And other times you just watch and smile at everyone else having fun, feeling kind of sad that you’re just an observer looking from the outside in, but content because you get to truly witness joy with no personal attachment.

You get into a random conversation with a stranger.

And you say yes when they invite you somewhere.

And the person maybe ends up being weird, but you get a glimpse into local life and a funny story that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Or the person ends up being cool and you make plans to meet up the next day too.

And the day after that.

You look at art. A lot of art. Is there such a thing as too much art? There might be such a thing as too much art.

You space out at gorgeous views and are overtaken by the vastness of the world and feel more small and alone than ever.

And somehow, all this beauty stirs up an aching sense of nostalgia for things you haven’t even experienced yet.

You explore historical sites and ancient ruins that make you reflect on the fact that, woah there have been so many people before me in this exact place who were also just trying to figure life out and be happy.

You find cultural activities. You learn a local dance style, watch a performance, and take a cooking class and you realize that you could literally spend your whole life learning and there would still be so many things you don’t know.

You visit churches, mosques, synagogues and cemeteries. You observe flamboyant rituals and learn about religion. You wonder how people came up with such strange and abstract ideas about the world.

You yell inside a huge empty cathedral just to hear your own echo.

You contemplate how that place and those rituals make you feel and you wish you also had something to so deeply believe in.

Sometimes you feel bored and lonely.

Sometimes you feel like a citizen of the world because you have friends and memories on every continent.

Sometimes you hate yourself because you feel so lost.

Sometimes you love yourself because you are so lost.

Because hey, you know that means there’s more to be found.