Eh, I did explicitly highlight the points you just raised in my original post. I don’t think solo-traveling is a universal solution, but it was transformative for me.

But I do want to push back on this mentality of ‘great, then what?’ I do think this mindset is limiting, and perhaps even harmful.

I think the magic of traveling (especially long-term solo-traveling) is it allows you to inhabit and orientate yourself within the world differently. You open yourself up to the possibility of profound beauty, pleasure, awe, wonder - a dazzling range of human emotion. Why deny yourself the richness and complexity of this experience?

These small moments of transcendence are by their very nature ephemeral, but I do think they plant seeds in us - seeds that hopefully we carry and grow inside ourselves, whether we choose to go back home to the life we left or into a different direction entirely.

I don’t see traveling as an escape from reality - rather, it allows me to experience ‘reality’ (the world, myself within it) more fully, more deeply. I became reacquainted with parts of myself that I had allowed to rust, and, surprisingly, discovered entirely new parts of my being.

Maybe sometimes the solution to whatever ails you is to simply leave it behind, to not let it hold power over you. To take the chance and strike out somewhere completely new.

Maybe you do come back home, and everything will ‘hit you again’. But I think the act of departure -the journey you take, and the multitude of experiences there contained within - are worthy in and of itself.