On Asking For Help

In general, it takes a unique personality type to be a traveller—to embrace a life of constant discomfort and uncertainty, and more, to love it. It take someone who is flexible, open, curious, confident and independent…or, more accurately, it forces them to become each of those things and more. For me, one of my biggest problems is asking for help. I am ridiculously stubborn, and will go to any length to do something for myself, not only to prove that I can, but because admitting that I occasionally need to rely on another person for anything terrifies me (I’m sure you can tell how good I am at relationships). Yet while travelling, I have faced numerous occasions where it is absolutely necessary to ask for help, normally from complete strangers. Discovering how to ask—and accept—help has been a powerful lesson I am still in the process of learning. On one hand, there is the ever present knowledge that not everyone is able to help and occasionally people give the incorrect information, on the other, without a random person on the street directing me towards the correct bus stop or metro station, there are countless times I would never have found my way. Some of the most incredible conversations I have had even started with me asking for help finding something. 

On my current adventure studying abroad in Spain, I have realised how much travelling in the past has taught me about asking for help. I never noticed how important the manner in which one asks for help is until now. On my way here, one of my flights was delayed and I missed the subsequent connection to Barcelona. Stuck in Frankfurt, I went to the service desk and waited to talk to someone about getting on the next flight. Afterward, I ended up at a cafe sitting near a group of American students in the same situation. They were talking about how rude everyone was to them at the desk and around the airport in general, saying how glad they were that they were not studying in Germany and how terrible it was that everyone was “like, so totally mean”. I thought back to my own experience at the airport. The people I talked to at the desk were incredibly nice, as were everyone else I talked to at the airport. One worker even let me borrow her phone to call the program I was with so I could tell them I would be arriving late! Then I heard one of the girls ask an employee where the nearest bathroom and instantly realised the difference. It is, in many ways, purely cultural. In general, we ask for things like we expect to get them, as though it is that person’s job to give us whatever we want. The customer is always right. Yet, when you go to a different country and speak to natives in English, expecting them not only to know your language, but to do whatever you want, of course you are going to be met with a degree of asperity.

One of the most important parts of travelling may be learning to ask for help, but learning how to do so is just as important. I am now more aware more careful than ever not act like I am entitled to answers, and the incredible value of learning the basics--hello, please and thank you--in as many languages as possible. And that a smile goes a long way. 

There's No Place Like Home

Post Travel Depression

I have been blessed to have had some incredible travel experiences for someone so young. Traveling alone has taught me more than any of my classes combined, not just about the world, but about myself. There is nothing quite like setting off on your own, with no idea where you are going or what you are gong to do there. I have had incredible adventures, met amazing people from all over the world, and experienced life in a way many people never even know is possible. Now, I have added a new lesson to my collection of things learned on the road. It has to do with returning home. 

After spending several weeks travelling in the middle east, I returned to school and, in an tiny, isolated town, dealt with the depression that comes with being stuck in one place. After my first solo trip, the road called to me like a long lost friend, and facing the reality of the world after traveling has proved to be one of the most difficult experiences I have had. I sat in my room day after day, looking at photographs and journal entries from past trips, and dreaming of new place to simultaneously lose and find myself once again. Day after day, I wished I could return to one of the many places that have captured my heart and shaped my identity and to the people who have opened my eyes to the beauty of the world. There is so much to experience—to me there is nothing more exhilarating than landing in a new place and having no idea where the hell I am going or what I am doing. In all my years of school, I have not learned half as much as during any one of my trips.  Yet despite this, each time I am forced to call a place "home" and embraces the sorry thing that is the development of a daily routine, the depression that comes with the transition is more difficult each time. Travel is an addiction. Once you taste it, you have to have more. It sucks you in and sweeps you away...there is no escape. Yet, in a way, this is why travel is so beautiful. Although it is little consolation, the way it allows us to become travellers in routines and daily lives is beautiful in itself. It is easy to become depressed once one is forced to stay in one place and make a life there, but without this, travel loses something.

There is no adventure without rest, and no true sense of what home is without struggling to find it elsewhere. Once home becomes a place within ones identity rather than a point on a map, but in a way that point is the beauty of travel. With the hope that someday the idea of home may become internal, maybe it is possible, someday, to see a routine and sedentary life as travel also. Maybe someday settling down will not seem like a sacrifice, but like the next adventure.