Solo travel has been on the rise lately. What was once looked at as a dangerous practice is now being embraced as a “coming of age” experience.
If you have lived this life to any extent, you have probably come to realize the beauty of distance. When an issue is right up in your face, you can’t see it properly. It isn’t until you take a step back and reflect that the image becomes clear.
Traveling is like that. It allows you to step back from the portrait of your issues and analyze them from a distance. Without the daily hum-drum of your problems and routine, you can get a better sense of clarity, and yes, run away from your problems (to an extent).
People who travel alone are wise because they know the beauty of escaping from their problems and leaving it all behind. They know that nothing clears a mind better than self-dependence and adventure. The best way to achieve this freedom from one’s own’s thoughts is by exploring a new land.
Solo travelers enjoy being with themselves.
When you travel alone, you have no choice but to spend long amounts of time with yourself, sight seeing by yourself. Nothing encourages confidence more than a pleasant meal alone in a coffee shop, followed by twenty more of these solo meals. It takes confidence to travel to a foreign place (even if it’s only a few states over) without the reassurance that comes with friends.
Traveling alone will help you embrace the fear that lives outside your comfort zone.
When you travel by yourself, you know what you are getting yourself into. It isn’t going to be easy and it won’t be all fun and games. There will be stress and if you get lost, you’ll have nobody but yourself to rely on. Those who travel alone know this going in, yet they embrace the opportunity for growth.
Sometimes life throws lemons at you and other times you seek them out yourself, in the hopes that these small and welcomed obstacles will help you grow. They always will. A person who sees the beauty in a challenge is wise enough to know that anything that is worth it, usually isn’t easy. The challenge of being in an unfamiliar land by yourself is worth the reward that comes later.
If you yearn to travel solo, you are mature.
You have recognized the value of being your own company and you know that nurturing yourself sometimes requires you to remove yourself. You allow yourself to be put in an uncomfortable situation for the sake of growth and experience. Own the experience and all the challenges that come with it and you will come out a better person in the end.
[Featured Image Credit: Global Panorama via Flickr]