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When I was contemplating finally quitting my job and following my dream to travel, there was one thought I always came back to that eventually convinced me to go for it: The fact that when I’m 90, I will want to look back and know that I’ve seen as much of this world as possible, and that I’ve given back to this world as much as possible. As morbid as it might sound, I thought about my funeral, too.
Turns out I’m not the only one. This week, traveler and blogger Gary Arndt of Everything Everwhere posted The Top 10 Reasons to Travel Condensed Down Into 1 – with that reason being “You are going to die.”
He explains simply that there’s a big world out there, and we can choose to spend our limited time trying to see it and doing things we enjoy, or we can spend time accumulating material things and doing things that don’t make us happy. I also like to think that we can choose to live within the comfortable bubble that we know, or we can choose to experience how life has manifested across the globe and personally grow as part of the process.
This doesn’t mean you need to drop everything and travel for the rest of your life; it simply means that if you’re interested in travel, you can make it happen by adjusting your priorities.
Arndt ends with an example that I think explains it all: “When my father passed away 2 years ago, at his funeral no one talked about the cars he owned or things he bought. We talked about the trips we took and the things we did. Past family vacations and fishing trips were the first things which came to everyone’s mind. In the final analysis, we are sum total of our experiences. Who you are is what you’ve done.”
What do you think? Does thinking about your limited time on earth motivate you to travel?
April 4th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
One year ago today we packed up our 2-door sports coupe and left behind all the constraints that “normal” society had been weighing us down with since we left high school.
Specifically, we were inspired by an excerpt from the commencement speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. We still carry this quote around in our wallets on 3X5 index cards as we have for the past year.
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
For the first time in our lives, we followed our own hearts and intuition and chose a stunning new lifestyle of not working very many hours, traveling perpetually, and building a fun and sustainable business that helps others and supports our life.
We have no regrets about our choice and look forward to even more exciting adventures this year and beyond.
April 4th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
[...] http://www.vagablogging.net/the-ultimate-motivation-to-travel.html [...]
July 16th, 2012 at 2:49 am
It seems like most of mature people travels because they want to have something to say at the end of their days or to enjoy life no matter what.. and I believe that whatever motivates you to travel is good… but how about students or people that travels with limited resources.. do you think they have the same thoughts? I will include that we want to learn more about different cultures, adventures and how our world is ruled so we can try to make a better place to live and a better world.