“Not everyone has the chance.”
“Not everyone has the money.”
“Not everyone has the time.”
“Some people have 9-5 jobs.”
“Some people have families.”
Excuses are abound when you talk to someone who claims they can’t travel. I’ve dispelled some of this in the past with my blog posts centering on traveling when you’re in your 20s–namely that those in their 20s don’t have the time, the money or the capability of traveling at whim.
You’ll hear the excuses I’ve reproduced above, and you’ll hear others that go along with them.
Maybe, though, you’re the one making them. Maybe you’re the one telling others that you can’t afford it and that you don’t think you’d find it worth the price. Maybe, in telling others that you can’t travel right now, you’re trying more to convince yourself this is true than you are trying to convince them.
And maybe–no, certainly–you’re wrong.
I’ve spent a good bit of my life moving from place to place. I’ve lived in Saudi Arabia, spending the first few years of my life living there, taking in the culture of the Middle East–at the time, the only culture I knew. Then I moved to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, and I couldn’t tell you how different that felt. It wasn’t just a big city nestled in a big state inside of a new country located on a new continent–it was a new world. From there, I’ve spent time in Cairo, Egypt–which isn’t as different from LA as you may think–and then, of course, Alabama.
These experiences have helped to shape me into who I am today. They’ve made me into the man who you see before you, the man who has walked through the same life as you in such a profoundly different way. These experiences made me into Lionel Barzon III. And they’ve opened my eyes to how important–how necessary travel really is.
It’s something that every human being should be able to experience in their lifetime–boarding a plane and embarking on what will become a truly life-changing journey to a new part of the world.
You can do it for cheap. You can book ahead of time, you can use hidden city ticketing and compare hotel and flight costs. You can pack light and fly economy. Money shouldn’t be an issue when something so enormous is at stake.
Traveling changes your life, and changes the way that you’ll look at the world. Experiencing other cultures–seeing other people–eating delicious food and learning, genuinely learning about the incredibly vast, endless plains of the Earth–that’s a life changing experience that I wouldn’t give up for anything.
