Taylor, I'm loving your travel series!

As for travel reasons, the world is becoming smaller. We're more aware of opportunities in far away places and getting to them is easier than ever. Those of us who do things that provide freedom in time and geography are fortunate. Why wouldn't we travel to access the best opportunities.

Personally, there's lots of reasons why I travel, including most of those you've cited. My first travel experience initiated all those that I do now – I met the lady I married and started a new 'geographically independent' career.

When I travel for business I love the ego boost and feeling important. It's always fun to tell the immigration officer that I'm there for business.

When I travel for family I love the familiarity and melancholy of being in a place I've lived for a long time but haven't seen for a while.

I also love amersing myself in a place rather than just visiting. I've lived more than a year on three different continents. I find the absence of familiarity with a place exhilarating. When you don't know how things work, the language, and the culture, everything becomes a challenge. I love visiting the country where I grew up, but there isn't that same sense of satisfaction of overcoming the challenges of a foreign country.

Agreed: much of the joy I find in travel comes from overcoming obstacles and finding that “sweet spot” when your journey feels less like travel and more like life.

I know the feeling of the ego boost, but it's what worries me; that feeling of superiority when you're not wrapped up in the daily lives of everyone else around you. It's powerful, uplifting, but also isolating and misleading, an escapist fantasy. It's possible to engage, dive in, create and give back wherever we are, but I think we tend to over-glamorize travel, entranced with the different, numb to the joy of our daily environment.

I don't mean to diminish those that choose to parachute into new places or glamorize slow travel, just to highlight that enjoying the the journey itself is part of enjoying travel.

But that's not what you meant, I know, just some thoughts spurred by your comment :)

Have you ever read Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel? Your note about loving the “melancholy” of past lives struck me…

And thanks!

I think the ego boost is healthy if you're conscious of it. Escaping the rat race is something we can all aspire to, and achieving it even for a limited time is a sign of success. Of all the available indulgences of success, travel and the escapist fantasy are some of the more noble, profoundly moving and least materialistic.

And I'm with you on style of travel too. We each choose. Even not traveling is a choice. And I'd expect that most of us use different styles at different times. When I travel for family reasons it's always a lot slower than when I travel for business. And regardless of the style, I always enjoy the journey. I love airports and long freeways. The 22 hour flights between my two homes are pushing it a little, but not so much I dread the trip.

I just added The Art of Travel to my wishlist.

It is the antidote to boredom. Children lead exciting lives because nearly all of their experiences are novel. I remain young by constantly placing myself in novel environments. During the past two years I've been saving up for my next 18 month escape I have learned how to dance lindyhop and play boogie-woogie piano.

Travel can be far more than an antidote to boredom: by constantly
placing yourself in novel environments I'm guessing you are learning a
lot, consciously and subconsciously.

Tapping into one's lost naivete is a key to staying young; travel
helps us by stripping away some of the knowledge we've acquired about
our environments, but travel doesn't automatically remove our filters
or change our mindsets.

[...] by a comment by Lee [...]

“Tapping into one's lost naivete is a key to staying young”

This is what I was getting at. You said it much better :)

“Escaping the rat race is something we can all aspire to, and achieving it even for a limited time is a sign of success.”

Lee, I think that most people fear leaving the rat race because they fear they will be left behind and unable to re-enter it to refill their bank account. Untrue… but they've got to find the courage to strike out and discover the truth for themselves.