“For every sin but the killing of Time there is forgiveness.”

- Unknown

Have you ever secretly dreamed of traveling the world?
Do you have a secret place of the globe you’ve always wanted to visit?

Planning for the trip of a lifetime is easy enough. It’s getting out of the rat race that’s the hard part.

Begin With a Dream

When I was seventeen, I knew I wanted to live in the rainforest. I grew up hearing so many stories about the rainforest, watching The Jungle Book, and wishing I could be in such a rich place. But I was born in the suburbs, and knew nothing of wilderness. The longest I’d ever been camping was exactly one night.

Still, I got it in my head that I would live at least six months in the tropical jungle. I got online, and researched how I could do exactly that. I found a few farms, and decided that was my best bet. I didn’t bother to call or make contact with any one of them.

I decided I would just show up, and figure things out once I got there. Most importantly, I decided there was nothing I could really plan from home. I resolved instead to figure things out once I got there.

Follow Through With Economy

If you want to do anything great in life, you’re going to need money. So if you’ve got issues with money, it’s time to get over it.

Figure out how much your trip is going to cost.
I created a budget for myself, and decided I needed at least $2000 to get myself down to Central America, and to begin working at a farm comfortably. The expenses I projected broke down like this:

• $380 – Plane Ticket
• $400 – Emergency fund
• $1200 – Four months at a budget of $300 / month

Saving up $2000 became my goal. I knew I could pick up my backpack and things for cheap. I just needed to begin saving, to get to $2000. I set a deadline, 6 months to get to $2000.

I counted everything. I set a budget, and I socked away $340 / month, no matter what. In the process, I learned how to be frugal with my money, and I learned the number one lesson anyone ever has to learn about money:

Spend less than you earn.

I know this is difficult for people to understand, but if you aren’t saving, you are financially dying. You will sink into debt at interest, and get to have compound interest working against you. So instead of just being poor, you will become poorer and poorer.

Break Free of The Rat Race

The first step to breaking free of the Rat Race is to find out how much you are actually spending. Stop and take a look at your bank account statement for last month.

How much money did you spend on eating out? On entertainment? On gas?

Start cutting, and cut ruthlessly. The bigger the trip, the more money you need to save, the more you need to pare down your lifestyle. This is a blessing in disguise, because it prepares you for the traveler’s life.

You learn to live lean. And this is the first virtue of being a true traveler.

Learn To Be Happy With Less

When the great religions and philosophers extol the virtues of poverty, what they are really referring to is the virtue of living beneath your means. It is an undeniable law of the world and economics, you must contribute more than you take.

There is no secret greater than this. Contribute more to the world than you take from it, and your riches will continue to grow exponentially.

Just Leave

With money mastered, and a bit saved up, it’s easy to say: “I just want to save a bit more and be safe.” Don’t.

Leave Now.

With any great trip, there will be a huge amount of fear. When I left to hike the Appalachian Trail, I was dropped off in the middle of nowhere with not nearly enough food for four days in the woods.

But I went, and pushed through the fear. I ended up solving all the imaginary problems I had within my head right away. Most of them never even happened. Which is why now, when I leave on a trip, I just go.

The longer you take to think and plan everything to completion, the less likely it is you will leave. So when you have a chance, take it.

What About Work?

If you’re lucky, you’re just out of school, and don’t have a job to come back to. If you’re unlucky, you’ve got a well paying job that won’t understand your wanting to backpack Nepal for four months.

To which I say:

“Screw them.”

Life is too short to be spent being someone else’s puppet. Let them take your fat paycheck and learn to live on less. Then give back more and watch your finances come back better than ever.

Learn From Your Travels

Living in foreign cultures is the quickest way to learn compassion. Being sucked into a completely different culture, barely able to speak to people certainly chops the ego down a few pegs. Which is good.

A traveler can’t help but turn inward to deal with the shock of being in such strange lands. This journey inward is the beginning of a great opportunity for personal discovery. Do not waste this chance by hanging out in hostels with your fellow countrymen.

I also recommend leaving for at least one trip completely alone. If you don’t feel comfortable alone in the cities, do so in the countryside. No matter what, make sure you experience being alone in a foreign country. You will never approach a foreigner in your own country the same way again.

Share

In this age of everything on the internet, why leave? Why leave the comfort of a computer and unlimited entertainment for poverty and travel? Why do anything?

Share your experiences, and share what has changed about you. Get people you know out of their comfort zones and into adventure. Life is too damn short for everyone to be hunched over computers checking their Facebook status. Get out and make the world a place worth living in.

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.”

- Kabir

I was looking for The Power of Duck, a book about incorporating duck husbandry into rice fields, when I found this:

Apparently, every year the Inakadate Village builds a rice paddy into an image. Using three unique strains of rice, they plot out a pattern using each strains specific color, and then painstakingly plant accordingly. Tourists are then invited to come to the city and tour the fields for free. It’s a way for them to boost their local economy while getting a chance at art. And it’s pretty impressive.

In a today’s culture of so much hurry, time for travel is often the first thing to get sacrificed. Why give ourselves the luxury of time to lie around, producing nothing, while the rest of the world continues to move, change, and leave us behind? In this competitive world, it seems ridiculous to opt out of participation for an extended period of time.

It doesn’t matter what stage of life you’re in, either. For kids graduating from high school, there’s the real economic benefit of college. For kids graduating from college, there’s the need to get real work experience. For the experienced, there’s a need to pay college tuitions back. And so on till death. Excuse after excuse for never taking the time to stop, and take a step outside.

No matter where you start from, creating the time to travel is going to be a difficult task. That’s where its reward lies.

A common problem with Americans these days is a love of the easy. Every other advertisement is promoting an “easy” solution to difficult problems. Overweight? Just call us, and we’ll mail you meals to slim you down. Unsatisfied with your life? Just take these pills and your brain will be fixed.

Only, these “easy” solutions never solve the real, underlying problems. You aren’t physically active enough because you don’t take the time for fitness. Your lifestyle bores you to death because you haven’t taken the time to figure out what wouldn’t.

The solution to these problems is challenge.

It’s easy to put off working out or changing your lifestyle. It’s very difficult to take a step back, look at your life, and decide significant parts of it are just plain wrong.

This is where long term travel comes in to help.

It’s impossible to get a full perspective on yourself while on the hamster wheel of daily habit. Travel shocks you out of these habits and gives you time to reflect. These two simple changes start a chain of events that lead to personal growth and understanding.

Just starting the process of planning for a trip leads to personal growth. You can’t leave for six months at a time with an unhealthy financial situation. If you’re in debt, travel is a real motivation to get out of it. How quickly can you turn around your financial situation so you can see the world?

If you’re not in debt, the prospect of saving for a few months of travel can be just as intimidating. How difficult would it be to save $10,000 for a full year of travel, and what changes in my lifestyle would be necessary to make that possible?

Either way, you’re forced to simplify your life into what really matters. Is buying that new computer really going to improve your life, or is it going to mean another month’s worth of delay for the trip? This little mental shift puts things into focus. You work and spend more efficiently. All of these mental shifts before you even stepped foot on a plane.

But then what about once you’ve left?

Will you really learn anything meaningful while drinking Margaritas on the beach in Thailand?

Without hesitation, the answer is yes. If you’ve worked hard and sacrificed to be able to sit on a beach and drink margaritas for a few weeks, then you deserve it. I think you’ll realize how quickly you can get sick of lying on a beach and drinking margaritas.

Because, once you’ve started challenging yourself to become better (in your own eyes) you get addicted to the process. You’ll realize that sitting around on a beach getting sloshed for years isn’t going to make you a better person, and it definitely isn’t going to lead to a life you’ll be proud of.

So you’ll look to the next challenge: What does a life you would be proud to live look like?

This is such a huge, fundamental question that it blows me away no one asks it at school. Even if we’re put on this planet for no other purpose than procreation and gene selection (hah!), this question is still of the utmost importance. What kind of a life do you want to live?

Of course, culturally we’re programmed to have a similar response as everyone else within our culture. For Americans, it would be a big house, a nice car, a great job, and a happy little family. But once we shock ourselves outside of our immediate culture, we realize how relatively unimportant that big house and nice car are. What matters universally takes over instead.

And those universal things include a great job and a happy family. A great job matters, because regardless of what we do, we have to continue working, to continue producing. There is no way we can get to the point where we can cease to produce meaningful contributions to the world. It’s flawed logic to stay at a job just because the pay is good. Ultimately, the pay is not nearly as significant as the portion of your life you wasted not living how you wanted.

The biggest spiritual lessons from travel are universal truths. No matter what religion you follow, it’s become popular because there is some universal truth to it. No religion has ever encompassed every universal truth, but all of the big ones address them in their own way to their own audience. A few months of travel and reflection will give you at least a few universal truths, and that alone is worth the price of entry. Discovering that Jesus’ words are actual, testable truths, that the Buddhist’s eightfold path is a testable design for a meaningful life, or that the Hindu concept of being here now is really the most profound concept you’ve read, you’ll find the spiritual gems of wisdom that have been handed down from generation to generation. Wisdom kept in the hands of those brave enough to seek it.

And that wisdom is what society needs most. Now and forever. So step outside and ask yourself if you’re willing to seek it yourself.

How good is the work you’re producing now?

Would you be willing to sell it to your closest friends? If the answer is no, why do you feel okay about selling it to other people? Do you think they won’t be able to notice what your friends would?

All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. If your work isn’t up to the quality level you feel comfortable sharing with friends, it’s not going to bring you success.

Why’s that?

Your friends cut through your own delusions. You can lie to yourself, and pretend what you’ve created is great, but when it comes down to it, you can’t fool your friends with what you produce. They are an honest reflection of yourself. If you’d feel awkward sharing what you’ve done today with your friends, you’re probably not producing the quality level you know you’re capable of.

For Buddhists, an integral part of the Eightfold path is Right Work, or Right Livelihood. Right work is optimal work, work that doesn’t hurt or harm any living thing. Work that brings happiness to both the worker and the people who recieve the work.

Is your work Right Work? And what sort of a job nowadays would really fit as Right Work?

It’s a process of discovery. Each person is born with unique talents and gifts, and under a different set of circumstances. It’s our job as humans to figure out what those gifts are, to build upon them, and then find a way to share them with the rest of the world. Once we’ve done so, the whole world falls into alignment, and the process of becoming successful becomes effortless.

You’re only doing what you would do for free.

And that’s a huge leap in your thought process. When you’re producing out of love of the process, you’re producing in a genuine way. It’s not a rushed job, and it’s not “just to pay the bills”. People notice when you put your heart into your work. Everyone appreciates someone who excels at what they do, regardless of what it is. Just watch a professional athlete who loves their sport, and you’ll see why.

So why waste your time on this earth in mediocrity. Why settle?

If you know what your talents are already, what are you doing to develop them further? Humanity benefits most when everyone develops to their true potential and finds happiness within their work.

If you haven’t discovered them, give yourself the time to discover them. Taking a long trip to a foreign country is a great start. It’ll make you realize just how ingrained and relative your social values are. Then you’ll think about what you really want. And that’s the start of everything.

This year was a very successful one for a group of my friends. Their band got picked up by a major label, they’re touring with a band they grew up admiring, and they’re getting more success every day. I spent a good bit of time with them on tour this year, and it made me realize the real danger and temptation of living through other people.

See, each of us live through someone (or something) to an extent. It may be a child, a lover, a friend, or even a job or a TV show. Either way, you’re letting someone else’s work give purpose to your life, instead of taking the time to find your own. You’re setting yourself up for a fall.

Stop Living Through Others

Nobody else wants to be in charge of your life. Giving yourself over to a cause (or a person) is the quickest way to get taken advantage of. No matter how good the cause, nobody is ever going to magically give you a direction you’ll be happy with. It’s something you’ve got to discover for yourself.

Vicarious living happens a lot in relationships. One partner is successful or extremely gifted, and the other decides to live to enhance and facilitate the others gift without developing their own gifts. The “gifted” partner is under constant pressure to produce from the one who doesn’t, and when he or she does, the other feels as though they can take some credit. Round and round they go, until the gifted partner decides they don’t need the “ungifted” anymore, and that’s where the “ungifted” suffers big time.

See, they never developed their own gifts, figured that was too difficult. But nobody is ever going to develop our gifts for us. We’ve got to get out there, figure what they are (by ourselves), and start working on them every day. The universe “owes” them nothing, because they were already born with everything they needed — the tools to become successful or gifted themselves. Because they chose the path of worshiping someone else’s gifts instead of pursuing their own, they’re destined to suffer the consequences.

Not taking the time to find and develop your own gifts should be illegal. But most people don’t do it anyways, and instead decide to seek out people who do, and latch onto them. But that person owes you nothing. You can undergo the same difficult growing process they went through, only on your own. You may do it slower, but you can still do it.

This is why I think it’s so important for kids to take a year off to travel between high school and college. If that’s out of the question, then between college and career. It becomes so much more difficult to take a year off for yourself later.

Discover Your Own Gifts

Long term travel is the best way to find out your gifts. But most people think it’s only for the rich, or people with huge savings. Let me be the first to tell you, taking a year off to travel doesn’t necessarily have to cost a million billion dollars. I took my entire first year off after high school for under $2,000. I moved to Costa Rica, began volunteering, and got my room and board paid for. I spent very little money in an entire year, and when I decided I wanted to back to the United States, I still had enough left to ride a bus up through Central America. I got to see every country in Central America after a years stay. It was a great gift, and it made me realize how lucky I was to have been born in a first world country. It also made me realize how brave the people who come to the United States illegally really are. It’s a hell of a trip to make; a human life is worth a whole lot less in most of those countries.

But after I left, I really had no clue how I could make my travel keep paying for itself. Sure, I could volunteer in one spot long enough, but then what about the cost of a flight to another country? I couldn’t really earn it working in that country, that’s illegal and very sketchy in corrupt governments. It also sucked to come back home and save money. I now realize the solution is the internet.

Technology has improved 100 fold since my time in the jungle. Even the smallest countries have an internet cafes; and if you can write in English, you can run a website successful enough to pay you to travel around the world. Just write stuff people want to read about, build a readership, and then put advertisements on your site.

You may have to start with a time of volunteering while you get your website up and running, but that’s really no problem. There are plenty of great organizations that will put you up with room and board in exchange for a few hours work every day. At the most, building a profitable website will take you six months. Just save up enough to go where you want to live, volunteer for six months, and write something of value every day. If you’re a horrible writer, take the time to become a great one. Post to your website daily or weekly for six months, and eventually you’ll have a large enough readership to pay you to travel around the world. On a budget, yes, but you’ll be seeing the world nonetheless.

You’ll also develop into a much more complete human being than you ever thought possible. Seeing different cultures firsthand is a quick way to learn compassion, and to understand the shortcomings of your own culture. By stepping outside of the environment you were raised in, you allow yourself to grow beyond it. That’s one thing people who never leave their home country can’t do.

The tools to do it are all there. But very few people ever really take the plunge. It seems so much safer to do what society tells us to, but how rewarding are 40 hour work weeks, really? I’d much rather take my chances with personal discovery than wait for the world to produce more people for me to worship.