Traveling Won’t Make You Happy

And why you should do it despite “The Marco Polo’s illusion”

For three years I have been living my dream of living abroad, and I am not happier.

Vacations Clocks

All my life, I imagined traveling as the solution to the oppressive monotony of daily routine.

My parents, my friends, and everyone around me worked hard every day of the year just to be able to enjoy two weeks of holiday in some foreign place around the world.

Then, once back to reality, they reset their “Vacations Clocks” and the countdown started again from 365.

The funny thing (for me not for them) is that, most of the time, all the money they hardly saved throughout the year, was used all at once for those amazing experiences.

Therefore, not only their “Vacation Clocks” was reset but also their wallets.

Every September the rain returned, the schools reopened, and adults returned to work with something new to brag about with their colleagues during the lunch break and a souvenir magnet on their desk.

Year after year.

I thought this was normal. After all, every adult I respect and admire follows this script every year. So, as soon as I could work, I started to do the same.

But something was wrong.

Every year, when the vacation was over, as timely as Christmas, a sense of oppression came knocking at my door. It was my duties that were waiting for me.

I realize that a vacation gives me the same dopamine effect as a good piece of chocolate. Sweet and too short.

Immediately after every travel, I felt the exigence of having more of that delicious reward.

The solution struck me one day, during one of my usual alienating work shifts:

“If I have to work to survive, then I’ll do it somewhere where it feels like a vacation, I want to eat chocolate every day!”

The Unstoppable Goal-post

I moved to Ireland in 2021 and set a list of goals to achieve within one year: 10k saved, a good job, learning English, and my house.

In one word I sought independence. I have achieved every single goal I set up in 6 months.

I was HAPPY!

For like one day…

Then a voice starts whispering in my head like a gently played, bad-tuned violin: “And now what?”

I thought once achieved those things, happiness would strike me like a truck. But nothing. It lasts less than me at the university.

“Maybe I need more money, a better job, or a better house?”, I thought. Therefore, my goal-post starts running like Usain goddamn Bolt, and once achieved it runs to the next goal and then the next one without making me feel any better.

What was wrong with me?

I was living abroad. The life I dreamt of. If this doesn’t make me happy what will do it?

The Marco Polo’s Illusion

Suddenly, instead of celebrating my goals, I found myself more lost than ever. I called this feeling of betrayal from your own dream of traveling “The Marco Polo’s Illusion”.

One morning I woke up naturally early, I wanted to sleep but couldn’t, so I got up, made a good cup of coffee, chose a good book, and went outside to read. It’s worth saying that I was still suffering the Marco Polo’s Illusion, my head was a stew of doubts, uncertainty, and meaningless-achieved goals, I was not happy to be up so early and not in a good mood.

However, once outside, I breathed a delicate breeze of fresh air that refreshed my mind like a to-fast-eaten ice cream while watching the sunrise. “Yeah…Ok…Not bad”, I thought. I started reading my book and after a few pages, it struck me.

No. It was not happiness, it was something different.

In seconds, I understood how lucky I was to be there.

What followed was a series of grateful thoughts not only for the goal I achieved but even for the country where I was born, the family I ran away from, the coffee I was drinking, and the clothes I was wearing. That day, I started to be grateful for every single small thing. It changed my life.

No, traveling won’t make you happy unless you can be grateful for what you already have, aware that traveling will change just the location of where YOU are.

Everything amazing that happened in my life is due to my decision to leave my country 3 years ago. However, it took me a full year to understand that you can change location, but You always travel with your own company.

Make sure not to set out on a journey before you have made peace with your inner problems, (from which you are probably trying in vain to escape) because traveling will not be the solution as you think but, rather, just a change of their frame and, hopefully, a tool to clarify them.

When your mind is foggy and you feel something is wrong, but you can’t identify what is the problem exactly, our default reaction is to simplify.

A simplification will help us quickly find a solution, which is what we want, even if it is nothing more than a placebo to shut up our minds for a while.

The most common simplification is about happiness: When I do X I feel great, So doing X repeatedly will make me better forever.

This is an example of what’s happening in your mind:

• I feel happy during my vacation=moving permanently will make me happy.

This kind of simplification is wrong and not isolated, it happens in many other aspects of our life, like money for instance:

• I feel happy when I buy new stuff=more and more stuff will make me more and more happy.

Indeed, traveling is like money: it won’t make you happy, but it can keep you away from unhappiness. If you desire to have more of it just for the sake of having it, you’ll be miserable forever.

So, if you move to seek happiness, everything will seem great at the beginning. If someone asks you how life is going, you can emphatically say that it’s amazing. However, even the most amazing experience you can dream of will eventually become routine, with problems and flaws, as it is normal to be.

And if you don’t start to be grateful for your current routine, you won’t be able to appreciate the new routine that is waiting for you abroad. Because trust me, a new routine is waiting for you there. You can’t run away, it is sure, like taxes and death.

Good Problems

Gratitude is simple but not easy. It is realizing that you do not need more of what you already have. It is the solution to the vicious circle of “I’ll be happy when I’ll achieve X”.

So, travel my friend. Oh, please travel a lot if you wish, but be aware that things sometimes suck even in the most unbelievable paradise in the world. The Marco Polo’s Illusion is always around, and that’s perfectly fine!

If you think of achieving a life without problems, you have some greatest issues that no Medium articles will cure.

What I suggest to you, instead, is a life full of good problems, indeed, my Marco Polo’s Illusion was a good problem! It was the best problem I could Imagine having three years ago.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: How to realize that I’m facing a good problem?

The answer is simple, ask yourself: Would my younger self slap the shit out of me to be complaining about this current “problem”?

At the end of the year, I’ll move again to the next phase of my life. But, this time, I know what I can expect (Good Problems) and what I’ll not find there (Happiness).

So, if you could remember a sentence of this piece I hope it would be:

Don’t travel seeking happiness, travel seeking good problems.