The Best Gifts of Travel: Lessons Learned, Changes Made, and Insights Gained.

The original article was published in TravelAwaits on November 3, 2020. It has been updated here.

According to the UN, there are, as of today, a total of 195 sovereign states. I have been traveling a lot but have gone to barely a quarter of them. I haven’t even completed exploring the state of Arizona where I have lived for ten years. The pandemic did not make it any easier for any of us. But that is now over.

However, there is no need to go everywhere. I must say, zoos, aquariums, and theme parks increasingly look and feel alike. Instead, I have found the difference between outer and inner journeys. A lot more attention is given to the former. Sixty-two of my 74 articles in TravelAwaits are about them, about a destination or a mode of travel. The rest are inner journeys, the ones less obvious. They are what comes about as a result of all life journeys. Here are three kinds: lessons learned, changes made, and insights gained.

Lessons Learned

Here is how a lesson is defined: an amount of teaching given at one time. Sometimes it can be as simple as operating a different kind of coin-operated shower at a campground. In Chicken, Alaska on the road to the Arctic Circle. Had I learned the lesson faster, I would not have had to give up and use the sink for a bath in the cold of fall way up there in the north. Other times it can be as complex as learning to find your way when you are lost where the language is as foreign as the land. I got by with a smattering of words aided by a great deal of hand and body language in rural Mexico.  How I wished I had taken lessons in conversational Spanish.

In fact, RVing in North America gave us one valuable life lesson. The RV which we used as our home weighed all of ten tons. It was so expensive to carry that weight as we went around the continent in the process of discovering different neighborhoods. The cost of fuel is one of the largest expenses in a life on wheels so we learned to stock up only a week’s supply of anything from groceries to other pantry items, have only a service for four of everything from silverware to linens, and not buy anything unless it replaces something else, and other smaller teachings. Guess what was the great life lesson it taught us? Yes, we discovered that the only way to travel light is to live light.

Changes Made

Now there are many definitions to the word change. Technically, it is the instance of becoming different (and it is as certain as taxes and death) from before. We constantly change as we go through life. But my hypothesis is that we change more when we travel because we are exposed to a barrage of new things consistently and often. For me, there were several life-altering changes I went through during my RVing days.

One of those was to finally realize how to become a wife. Before I left to migrate to and retire in the US, my calling card had these words printed on it: “President/CEO.” Now it reads “Wanderer, Writer, Wife.” On my third try at marriage, one that was at the outset fraught with gender, cultural, and individual differences, especially in our advanced years, I succeeded. Travel gave me so many coping mechanisms and more things to pay attention to, during our extended honeymoon years. In the end, the throw pillow that read “We get along in our RV coz we don’t have room to disagree” became a treasure.

And I not only became a wife without losing my identity, but I also became an American without losing my roots. The RV Odyssey led me through three stages of an American discovery. In the West, I was moved by the beauty of the land and began humming “America, the Beautiful.” As we crossed the Midwest, a gradual conversion to the American way of life happened, including cooking burgers and dogs, wearing jeans and ball caps, and dancing two-step and rock and roll. The transformation became complete when we reached the East and found America’s historical roots. I began to hum the “Star-Spangled Banner.” At the swearing-in ceremony, I did not receive just a piece of paper. I felt I deserved to be an American. But, I could not forget my home country, my fellow Filipinos, and my best friends and family. So I became a dual citizen!

Insights Gained

Finally, travel gives us the gift of insight, a deeper understanding of a person or thing. We have so far traveled to 38 countries. In the process, I have developed better perspectives of qualities that travelers must have in new and strange lands: flexibility, curiosity, and courage. Here's an article I wrote about it. I have also been able to deal with different kinds of travel mishaps including falling ill while on the go. A good attitude is essential during such times (this is my next post). 

I have also better understood that there is time and reason for traveling with either BFFs or your spouse, for going to brand new or old favorite destinations, or when is the best season to travel and how long to stay in a place.  Because of travel, I have also repeatedly discovered that there are so many beautiful people out there and that food is always best at its place or origin. Finally, I have come to really stick to my routine for keeping fit even while on the go.   

Now that I am no longer able to travel like before, I have discovered how to focus on inner journeys. My husband and I have this luxury at home where we stay most of the year. We were enriched by outer journeys but now we relish the inner journeys that were born out of them. Whatever age you start traveling, you must take note of ongoing inner journeys, too. They are the best gifts of travel and become more precious over time.

All these three gifts are told in my second travel book, Cruising Past Seventy. (Subtitle: It’s Not Only About Outer Journeys. It’s Also About Inner Ones).

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