Life Kit - Why Travel? Find Joy When You Leave (Or Stay) Home

Episode Date: July 26, 2019

What is all our wandering for? In this episode, we find meaning in the journey, not just the destination, with help from a professional traveler and an artist whose expertise is doing nothing at all.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. This is Life Kit from NPR. We start in Hawaii just before sunrise on a Hawaiian volcano, Haleakala. It's a volcano 2 million years old. To get there, you have to drive for hours in the dark. Because the sun hasn't come up to the top of this volcano to take a photo of the sunrise, which always looks really amazing because it kind of comes

up over these clouds. Jenny O'Dell, an artist from California, trekked there with her parents to catch this famous sunrise. But it wasn't so picture perfect. It's really cold and windy up there. Everyone's just like shivering and like waiting for the sun to come up. And they were like using their selfie sticks to get their cameras over other people's cameras so that there wouldn't be people in the photo. And then as soon as the bottom of the sun was above the clouds, so it's no longer a sunrise,

everyone got back in their cars and drove down the volcano. Like, it's a national park. You could, like, look at other things there, but it was just like, you know, okay, no, I have consumed this image now, so there is no longer a reason for me to be here, and I will leave. Surely we don't just travel to capture an image and leave, but it seems like that's happening. You can't open up a browser tab this summer without seeing stories about swarms of tourists crowding once serene places. So during this age when everything is relentlessly mediated through social media, we wanted to step back for a moment. What is traveling away from home really for?

How can it be more meaningful? This is NPR's Life Kit Guide on travel. We have episodes on planning and packing and on social dynamics when you travel together. This one is a little different. This is about why we wander in the first place. What's the point? How do we make our trips more fulfilling? I'm Elise Hugh, an NPR West-based correspondent who does a lot of travel for work and pleasure with friends and family. Which got me thinking, what do we mean by travel for pleasure? Is it really pleasurable? How do we make it better for our souls and selves? It doesn't have to be anything apart from what you make it.

Travel writer Tori DeRoche and artist Jenny O'Dell on making the most of leaving home, maybe without leaving home at all. You don't have to go to the other side of the world to be transformed. It's coming up in this NPR Live Kit after the break. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices. The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever. Follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR.

You can find so much on the internet about traveling better, whether it's trying to get more upgrades on your flights or minimizing your wait time for trains or packing hacks, guilty. Travel guides often focus on the practical stuff, but traveling well isn't just about getting from point A to point B. So this episode is about the art of travel, why we do it, and how we can make it most meaningful. Meaningful experiences aren't a good time or a bad time. You can go away and spend 30 days crying, and that can be meaningful to you.

It can be meaningful to your life. Tori DeRoche is an Australian travel writer who began her life as an adventurer when she left her job as a graphic designer and set sail on a rinky-dink boat for more than two years with the man she was dating. It was a 1979 sailboat that was covered in these blisters because it wasn't, it was, it had an aesthetic problem that made it half price. My ex, he had been saving for years and years to do this dream of his and it's not terribly costly and it leaked and it had all kinds of issues. So it was anything but luxury.

Before this point, DeRoche never went on vacations longer than a few weeks, and she was terrified of deep water. But she faced her fears. We spent two years and we sailed from Los Angeles down to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and that was hell. It was a hellish journey. Our high hopes for a great time can easily be dashed by the hassles or hellish experiences. But Darosh says even those can be transformative because they force you to stretch yourself, as she did. So since then, I've kind of almost sought out adventures that seem challenging and beyond my

reach to some degree. And I've done walking pilgrimages through Italy and through India, and I've climbed Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, and yeah, I've been all over the world doing all kinds of strange things since then. Her takeaway on meaningful travel is our first tip for you. Meaning is what you make it. A meaningful time isn't necessarily a good time or a bad time. You bring the context and meaning to your experiences, even if it's not the postcard version of a place. Don't fight it. It's a perfectly valid experience to cry in Italy while eating gelato. So yeah, giving up this idea that travel has to look like

something that maybe you're seeing on Instagram, that it has to be beautiful, that it has to look like something that, you know, that maybe you're seeing on Instagram, that it has to be beautiful, that it has to be joyful, that it has to be social. It doesn't have to be anything apart from what you make it. Go ahead, cry in Italy. You don't have to perform your trip for anyone else. Tip number two to find fulfillment in adventure. Make yourself uncomfortable. Confront what scares you. For starters, because every new country you go and every new culture presents its own challenges.

So I'm always kind of loosening up my fears every time I go somewhere. Tori did it by setting sail for years, something she never thought she would do. Travelling to new places is a way for us to stretch beyond our comfort zones. So engineer your travel so you're doing things that scare you a little bit. It brings me closer to other cultures. It brings me closer to other countries and to the planet itself. Every time I go away, I feel strongly connected to the world and to other people in the world, and that in itself is empowering. When we live in a city, I think you can easily slip

into this feeling of individualism where it's us and them. We get surrounded by terrible media telling us to be afraid of other people, And when you travel, it breaks all of that down. You realize the world isn't as scary as maybe you come to believe. And that just enriches my life and my experience of life. A note here, while all this enrichment is uplifting, we have to remember that getting to travel at all is a pretty privileged situation. A lot of us can't afford to get away.

Marcel Proust has a really great quote, which is the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. So even if you're in a state of grief and you're struggling with your life, go somewhere new and try to see it with new eyes. Try to be there in that moment with that experience right there and see what you find. This whole idea of going away without going very far at all is why I called up Jenny O'Dell. O'Dell is an artist and author. She lives in Oakland and loves nature. She wrote a book called How to Do Nothing, and we caught her in her favorite rose garden. I'm usually here at least a couple times a week. I live in an apartment building, so I don't have a yard. So I kind of consider this my backyard. She's going to help

us dig into the why of travel, because understanding the purpose and being true to that can bring us more satisfaction. That's takeaway number three. Remember the why. Why? Why should we go? Why should we get away? Yeah. Oh, are you asking me that?

Yeah. Yeah. It might be different for you, but try on this framing. We travel for perspective and surprise. You know, if you live with a pretty solid schedule or routine, there's certain things that you can start to take for granted. And just simply removing yourself from those circumstances, wherever you might end up removing yourself to, is really helpful for getting some kind of new perspective on yourself and your life. You said perspective, but also surprise. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing that comes with routine is that you, you kind of expect things or you kind of maybe don't perceive things outside of what you're expecting. And I think, you know, the experience of traveling

is for a lot of people opening yourself up to being surprised, like you're willing to be surprised, you're expecting to be surprised. I think that's a very different mentality than you have in your everyday life. For Odell, her approach is to strike a balance between a little structure and a lot of room for surprises. Like I'm sitting in the middle of a garden right now. It's a perfect example also of like, there's a lot of work that goes into this garden. It's designed in a way to let you spend time here. And that's not arbitrary. Like if this were just a random field, you know, there wouldn't be all these places to sit. You have to strike this balance between sort of designing something and researching something,

but also just understanding that the actual life of it is going to come from the place, not from the design. The design is just there to make that accessible to you. So strike a balance between structure and nature. Yeah, and by nature I just mean like kind of what is already there, like pre-existing processes and things and beings. For example, you can see the volcano at sunrise, but spend another few hours exploring the natural world of the national park. Be open to a sign that could take you down a new path. Remember that why. Travel is meaningful if it helps us expand our perspective and if we can be surprised. And why do you think these two values or objectives are important? I equate them with feeling alive. If you take routine to its logical extreme,

you're just sort of an automaton, right? Like you're going through the emotions, like you're doing the things that you're supposed to be doing for the reasons you're supposed to be doing them, maybe without a lot of room for questioning or thinking about something else you might rather be doing. And so being surprised and getting perspective, I think are two different ways of kind of like shaking free of that framework and continuing to change as a person. Takeaway number four is about really going somewhere when you leave home. Is your travel about exploring a place or is it about checking off a box? To get somewhere and be open, treat travel as an experience and not as a product.

It's almost like people go to the Grand Canyon expecting to like consume a postcard or something, that it's not an actual physical space with physical characteristics. There was one TripAdvisor review of the Grand Canyon where he said it was like a three star review. And he said, once you've seen it, you've seen it, which is just like a really interesting description of the Grand Canyon, which is like formed over so long. It's such an amazing, I mean, like it just goes to show, right, this kind of image-based idea of travel where it's like, I saw a photo, I want to go possibly take that photo myself or be in it, and then I will leave. You can do more than just see it.

To go somewhere, really go somewhere. Treat yourself to travel that is an experience, not a product to be consumed. Even in those kind of, you know, difficult or like logistically annoying moments, just recognizing that you're somewhere new and it's something you haven't experienced before. Which gets us to the next tip. Takeaway five for finding fulfillment and getting away. Seek out what makes the place you're in truly different from the last place you were in. Focus on what makes the place unique. Just kind of doing enough research ahead of time to find things that are specific to a place that you can't just experience somewhere else. Volunteer while on a trip so you're not spending time in tourist traps. Give back to the local communities while learning about them at the same time. Forge friendships in a foreign place. Odell grounds herself in a sense

of place by seeking out nature. I think you have a vague sense, right? Like if you go somewhere new, oh, like these are new trees, or I don't know what kind of bird that is that I'm hearing, or something like that. She keeps an app called iNaturalist on her phone. It helps identify the creatures and plants wherever she goes. Each place you travel has its own unique ecology, so you can take it in. This kind of gives me like some traction, like I can start to like learn, you know, the names of things or just get like a little more detail about the ecological communities that live somewhere that are native to a place. And personally, I've started to feel like if before I've done that, I haven't truly

arrived in a place, especially if you're, you know, spending a lot of time in kind of sterilized commercial spaces that look the same as everywhere else. Like I like to kind of try to find things to latch on to that are truly different about a place. Part of the reason I went to the artist who wrote How to Do Nothing about finding meaning in travel is because she went on a year and a half long road trip across America without even leaving her home. I did this project that honestly started out as kind of a gimmick. She called it Travel by Approximation.

It was a virtual road trip across the U.S. via Google Street View that I took. And basically, the fictional travel narrative is two months, but it took me a year-and-a-half to do because I used Street View to navigate and find stuff. And then once I found things that way, I would look them up on TripAdvisor, Yelp, YouTube. I just kind of try to get the overall picture of, you know, how this thing shows up online and all the experiences people have had of it. It's called Travel by Approximation because I try to really approximate real travel. She would pick actual restaurants where she would eat if she went and calculate the drive time to them and how much gas it would take.

I would order off the menu if possible. I was really trying to ask this question of when do you actually know a place or like when, like what does it mean to actually have been to a place and to know it in doing the project she was also making a statement over planning your vacations means in some ways you've already gone on them in your head the trip itself then becomes just executing it and not being transformed by new surroundings how do you do more than just see a place? How do you go somewhere and actually go there and be there? I think that it has to do, some of it has to do with just observation. Don't just snap a photo.

Observe. Take in the space and your surroundings. You can do that by talking to locals, the people who live there. It takes humility and also if you're a person who loves to plan everything in advance, it probably sounds a little bit scary. The locals can guide you to good places that you didn't plan for. For me, talking to strangers is a really big part of it. Asking strangers for recommendations is so different

than having things recommended to you algorithmically because people have personal reasons for enjoying things. They have context around that. Leaving enough unplanned space to acknowledge that the meaning is going to come from the place, not from you ahead of time planning your trip. Like, that's impossible. Both our experts, Tori DeRoche and Jenny O'Dell, emphasize shifting our mindset to experience the newness and surprise you can get from travel.

We are sort of like culturally used to applying one type of a mindset in one situation. And then we kind of have a different mindset that we apply at home. And I think like very quickly you will be humbled by the things that you don't know about that are sort of right in your backyard. What is it about our mindset that changes when we go very, very far away? And how would you recommend we take that mindset from far away and apply it in our own rose gardens or in our own backyards? I think it has just a lot to do with what you're looking for and what you're looking for has to do with what you think you're doing.

Jenny reminds us that you don't have to pack a bag at all to see a place with new eyes. And that's our last tip. Take that fresh eyes mindset home. You can take a different way to work, find a new jogging route, or just take a moment to appreciate the view from your own porch a little longer. If you think you're on vacation, then you are basically setting out to experience leisure time, right? Like that's your goal. I mean, people travel in different ways. It depends on your job, but you're probably working. Like you have a routine where you get up at a certain time

and you maybe take the same train and you go to the same place. It's like, you know, maybe you haven't had a day in a long time where you were in your own neighborhood, maybe you haven't had a day in a long time where you were in your own neighborhood, but you weren't trying to work. And so you didn't have that kind of framework. Um, so I just think I, I mean, I've just been surprised in my own experience where, um, if you take what you were, what you're trying to do on vacation, which is to not work, um, and experience new things, and you just do that at home, it will completely change the things that you notice and that you perceive. Just go outside and walk around. Walk aimlessly, like Jenny O'Dell does.

You go outside and you're like, I don't even know what I'm looking for. I'm looking for anything. Then you will see anything. Like, you'll see all of these things outside of the categories of what you're usually looking for. What kind of value have you derived from just observing your surroundings, whether you're far away or close to home? I think that it's just enlarged my capacity to be surprised. I think that's almost like a faculty that you exercise, and it can be narrow or it can be wide wide and I think you can widen it on purpose. Curiosity can open up new worlds to us. It just becomes very quickly evident that I will never

really get to the bottom of things that I'm observing and that is such a delightful feeling and it's so different from consuming a product. It's also different from looking things up online where the answer is yes or no. It's kind of the opposite of that. It's like a seemingly simple point that opens onto kind of infinity as long as you're willing to go down that path. I'm sort of addicted to the feeling of curiosity. And so it's been really wonderful for me

to find out that I can have that anywhere. This was a heady episode packed with meaning. So let's review the takeaways from Tori, who sailed around the world for a few years, and Jenny, who gets the soul-boosting benefits of travel without leaving home. Takeaway one, meaning is what you make it. A meaningful time isn't necessarily a good time or a bad time. You bring the context to your experiences,

and that might not be the postcard version of a place. It doesn't have to be anything apart from what you make it. Tip number two to finding fulfillment, never stop being slightly afraid. You realize the world isn't as scary as maybe you come to believe. And that just enriches my life and my experience of life. So engineer your travel so that your doing things scare you a little. Three, remember the why. Being open to perspective and surprise is a good frame.

Takeaway four is treat your travel as an experience, not as a product to simply snap some pictures up leaving enough unplanned space to acknowledge that the the meaning is going to come from the place not from you ahead of time planning your trip takeaway five seek out what makes the place you're in truly different from the last place you were in some of it has to do with just observation do more than just see a place. Be there. And finally, you don't have to leave home to be transformed. Bring the open perspective you have on a trip

to your daily experiences. That's it for this Life Kit on meaningful travel. For more NPR Life Kit, check out other episodes in this guide. There's one on navigating group travel without ruining your relationships. And another on logistics, planning and packing like a pro. If you like what you hear, make sure to check out our other Life Kit guides at npr.org slash life kit. And while you're there, subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss anything. We've

got more guides coming every month on all sorts of topics. In the meantime, here's our random tip. Get outside. Nature. It's full of surprises. Yeah, you have a... got some yard work. Weed whacker person just appeared. It's authentic Rosegard. I'm Elise Hu. Thanks for listening. Americans kind of owe recycling to the mafia. And a huge mistake by this guy.

Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance. There was a cartel that controlled the flow of garbage. Why we started recycling on NPR's Planet Money podcast. This message comes from Grammarly. 89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority. The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at one-third of Fortune 500 companies use Grammarly. With top-tier security credentials

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