Have you ever gone on a long journey/trip to "find yourself"?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Well, by and large I don’t believe in ‘finding yourself.’ As a Christian, I do believe that we all have a calling by God to do what we are best at and that this can be discovered sometimes through quiet meditation, BUT, I do not believe that we have some sort of inner personality or essence that will be drawn out by a trip into the wilderness. We create who we are by how we decide to live each moment.

Of course, with all that said, I think trips like this are an amazing thing. You learn how to push yourself to the limit, how to react in unexpected circumstances, to be confident, and just how to be an all-around better person. Still, one doesn’t need an adventure in a strange land to do this; it just makes it more exciting, dramatic, and interesting on average.

I have not taken a trip like this yet, but I do plan on it before I hit 30.

22

Well, maybe not better, but definitely a different you. On my travels I’ve had loads of experiences that I would never had if I stayed at home. To me, this is a better me. To others, well, who knows? To some certainly worse, as I have a tendency to share my experiences, which comes across as somewhat elitist to some. Or so I’m told. But for good or worse, it is certainly a different me, which I experience as a better me.

23

I started my journey when I was about sixteen and expanded it greatly when I was 23 and embraced hippie beliefs and attitudes, which I’ve never entirely given up, and have continued my journey till now and intend to continue it until I die. I’ve followed two main trades and one profession, as well as a series of odd jobs. I’ve learned that I can make it when I need to and enjoy it when I have it and don’t particularly miss it when I’ve lost it*. In other words, my journey has no destination other than death and I hope it continues past that point. Sounds pretentious as hell, doesn’t it? True, though.

*Other than my career with designing and manufacturing quartz crystals; I miss that life terribly as it was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done.

24

Do it now. Pull up a website right now and make a reservation. Sure, its not a good time for it. But it will never be a good time for it. I know you have reasons not to, but you are just going to have reasons not to next year, as well. If you want this to happen, make it happen.

25

Unfortunately I found myself sitting in front of a computer wasting time. It wasn’t very dramatic.

26

Well, I agree with everything you said here. My travels have definitely improved me. Maybe it’s a question of interpretation, because I hear the phrase “find yourself” and it makes me think of an already existing internal self, one that is only uncovered by stripping away the comforts of everyday routine and doing something new, and I personally do not think that fits my experience. Rather, travel has added layers and given me new perspectives and ideas with which to view the world. So I wouldn’t say that I “found myself”, but certainly it has improved who I am.

27

I had one job for about a year where I was constantly traveling all over the US and sometimes Europe. Mostly by myself. After awhile you start to feel very disconnected like Ed Norton from Fight Club. Sure, you make some “single serving” friends every now and then, but you spend a lot of time eating by yourself, sitting in airports by yourself, going to bars and clubs by yourself, or attending meetings with people you barely know to talk about something you just learned about. And what can be wierder is that I didn’t feel much more connected when I got home since I was only there on weekends and didn’t know that many people locally.

So no, I didn’t really “find myself” but I at least gained an understanding why middle aged businessmen often purchase hookers and spend a lot of time drinking on the road.

On the other hand it is a good experience overall and if nothing else does give you a greater appreciation of what makes “home” home for you.

28

Best pastrami: Pancer’s on Bathurst in Toronto.

Best smoked meat: Schwartz’s in Montreal.

29

A few days ago, I walked a couple of miles up a gentle hill near the area. It’s a good stop-gap measure for now. :slight_smile:

30

I’m solitary by nature. Time spent alone in the natural world–whether on a trail in the forest, walking along a tideline, or wandering in the desert–recharges my battery like nothing else. It’s the closest thing to finding myself that I’ve ever experienced. YMMV.

31

I used to take trips by myself all the time in my single days. The most memorable one was a week I spent in Poland. Walked around Krakow and saw the sights for a day, took a day trip to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II - Birkenau, and so on. Traveling by myself wasn’t ever a life changing event, but it did kind of teach me how to be alone with my thoughts and that being by myself wasn’t the worst thing in the whole world.

32

I never bothered going out looking for myself–I just hired a private investigator to keeps tabs. Last month I was somewhere in Peru.

33

My husband and I were talking about this last week. We were walking a trail in a state park, out in the middle of the woods, and I said, “Imagine how scary it would be to be lost out here at night.” He looked at me as if I’d just grown another head, and said, “It amazes me sometimes when I realize how differently we think.” He attributed much of his self-sufficiency and fearlessness to a road trip he took with some friends when he was a teenager. He says it taught him that he could cope with most any situations that came up.

His seventeen year old son has also taken a couple of long trips alone, to visit a girlfriend in another state. I can’t imagine ever letting one of my kids do such a thing, but at the same time, I was crushed by a wave of envy. I’ve never gone off alone like that and may never get the chance to. I think it could be a very beneficial thing for a young person.

34

Well, in college I needed to shake myself out of a rut, so I took off spring, summer, and winter quarters (about nine months in total; we were on a trimester system, although we called them quarters, with summer counting as one, although it’s not part of the regular year.) My parents were not very happy at all, but I knew what I had to do. I spent two months working in a small village on the west coast of Scotland (Port Appin), spent a couple months in Wolverhampton, took a month in Slovenia volunteering at a muscular dystrophy program, and then took three months or so volunteering in Pakrac, Croatia, teaching photography and helping out the remaining post-war population with stuff like chopping wood, rebuilding sheds, that sort of thing.

The first part of the trip was definitely about finding myself. The rest was a mix of adventure, sating some curiosity, and a desire to help out. I also wanted to see how well I could function, by myself, in foreign lands with nobody to guide me. I found a job within a week, I found the volunteer opportunities, I figured out my travel and everything, learned enough of the local language (in Croatia) to have basic conversations. Not that I had any doubt, but I just wanted to see how well I could do it. And, surprisingly, at no point do I remember feeling particularly lonely or lost. I loved every minute of it, and when I returned, I was completely refreshed and energized as a human being and all the problems that had been plaguing me when I left were but a distant memory. It was a very big and tangible change for the better in my life, and I would not be where I am now without having made that journey.

35

Well, it’s not exactly finding myself, but every year I find a way to go on a walkabout. Just to get away for awhile and see if I still enjoy my own company. Usually for a week or so, somewhere way out in the woods. Sometimes I wander every day; sometimes I find a little slice of heaven and hang out for a few days. It usually involves hiking, and swimming in high mountain lakes. The best times are when I’m on my way to party with friends but I have some time to myself along the way.

Last July I found a high meadow still covered in snow, with a view of the backbone of the Sierra Nevadas. I sat on the tailgate and watched a gigantic thunderstorm sizzlefry the peaks til long after midnight. Way up on top of a peak there was one dim blue light. Those guys must have had a front row seat, but I liked my view better.

36

I’ve had some cool travel and going away experiences, and they led to some personal growth and/or freshness of the brain, but I wouldn’t say they were for the purpose of finding myself. I’m actually at a stage right now where I really do need to find myself, and quick lol. I’m looking for work, but I’d really like to be in a work situation that is right and fulfilling for me. Not sure what that is.

Some of my experiences:

As a real little kid, my mom was somewhat of a gypsy, and we lived in Florida, Texas, San Francisco, and Connecticut. But then she settled down with my stepdad when it was time for me to go to school, back on Long Island.

Except for fourth grade - stepdad had a sabbatical, so we lived in Austin Texas for half a year where he guest taught, then Oregon where his family lives, and then just me and my mom stayed in San Francisco for the summer. What’s funny is that before I went, I was considered by my school to be borderline stupid (my mom kept telling them not to put me near the window where I could daydream lol), but when I got back I was put in the gifted program. In any case, going west involved a cool road trip with stops in places like the grand canyon and painted dessert, and one of my stepdads relatives farms. Returning east, we went through Canada. Was amazed at one of the cities we stopped in - it had tall buildings like NYC, but was clean, had a nice little river running through it, and was green like a suburb. Along the way the car broke down and we had to stay at a motel/garage/diner for a few days where I made friends with the local kids. I’m really itching to go on a road trip again, by myself or with my 17 year old brother.

Summers and some winter breaks I often spent a week or two with my grandparents in Vermont, in a very outdoorsy area.

For college I lived at home, but the summer I turned 21 I stayed with some friends of mine who had moved to Pittsfield Massachusetts for the entire break. We lived in what I guess used to be a mansion that got turned into an apartment building. It was full of cool characters like a painter who had no furniture in her apartment, only a mattress and a small pile of books, and a guy from Scotland who was on the local soccer team.

While I was there, my one friend was going to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival for a week. She would be passing through Niagara. I had recently learned that one of my ancestors is a famous Canadian who lived there, and thought it would be cool to do some research on her, so I asked my friend to drop me off there on her way to Michigan, and pick me up on the way back. I had only the clothes I was wearing and what I could fit into my backpack, and only a tiny little bit of money. The first night I slept in a ditch on the side of the road. My ancestor’s house was a historical place and I made friends with the people there. I slept the rest of the week on their back lawn except for the last night, when they let me sleep in the outdoor access bathroom (and brought me some leftovers). To get around I usually walked, but on the two days I had places to go that were too far to walk, I either rented a really crappy bike from a local hotel, or got the all day pass for the bus. I went to the two houses my ancestor lived in, a few monuments, a museum, and the local library. Also checked out the falls, the giant turtle shaped art museum, the imax, and wandered aimlessly. Didn’t have a cell phone so I had to arrange for my pick up on the pay phone through my friend who was still back at the apartment. But I survived and had a great time.

More recently I spent two weeks in Honduras visiting a friend and his family. That was really a very different experience. No running water - bathed using a barrel and a bucket. Wherever we went the truck was crammed with 15 people on each others laps. Beautiful scenery and also very poor people. Trying to talk with people in very broken Spanish. Being the new ‘toy’ for the local kids. I had a great time, but I really felt the entirety of the time I was there. When I got back, I felt like I had been gone for months, and felt out of touch with my life as I knew it. I even wondered if I had forgotten how to do my job lol.