Two years ago, when I lived abroad, I made note of everything I experienced. Especially when those experiences contradicted the clich\u00c3\u00a9s I had heard about travel.<\/p>\n
Most of the time, my experience wasn\u2019t exactly original. I made great friends, partied a lot and now I miss the people and places. Honest, but pretty much what I had been told before setting out.<\/p>\n
One difference between clich\u00c3\u00a9 and experience, was the idea of \u201cfinding yourself\u201d. Repeatedly, I\u2019d heard that a major reason for travel was self-discovery, to better understand who you are and what your life should be.<\/p>\n
Instead, I found the opposite. More than anything, I felt living abroad weakened my identity. Things about myself I had complete certainty in became fuzzier.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m realizing that \u201closing yourself\u201d might not be such a bad thing.<\/p>\n
Society encourages self-discovery. We like people who have strong identities, opinions and convictions. That\u2019s why we like stories of people who quit their jobs to go travel and discovered their life\u2019s calling along the way.<\/p>\n
I feel this discovery bias is present in everything we do. We tell young people to find the job that makes them passionate, find the partner who makes them fall in love and find the lifestyle that makes them happy. We don\u2019t generally tell people to doubt themselves or who they are.<\/p>\n
But, in my travel abroad, I saw how the opposite, losing oneself, could be equally valuable.<\/p>\n
Finding is the process of accumulating more answers, or less frequently, overwriting old answers.<\/p>\n
Finding the answers to a test means adding more correct answers to the questions you didn\u2019t know, and occasionally changing your answers to questions you got wrong. It\u2019s an additive process.<\/p>\n
The clich\u00c3\u00a9 of \u201cfinding yourself\u201d in travel is the sam e process, but with your identity instead of a test. You find answers to questions you had about yourself, \u201cHow should I live?\u201d, \u201cWho do I connect with?\u201d or, \u201cWhat should I pursue?\u201d.<\/p>\n
Occasionally, you also overwrite old questions. The workaholic consultant flips to a perpetual nomad, changing a previous answer about how to live with something else.<\/p>\n
Losing yourself is a different process entirely. Instead of adding or overwriting your identity, you\u2019re asking questions you hadn\u2019t previously considered. You\u2019re adding unsolved questions to the test, not just updating ones you\u2019ve previously been asked.<\/p>\n
Culturally we have less respect for this shift in identity. The workaholic consultant who travels abroad and leaves uncertain about what to do in life doesn\u2019t have the same narrative appeal.<\/p>\n
One of the cultural differences between France and Canada, I observed, was the view on eating. The French viewed eating more from experiential terms, while Canadians viewed eating more from nutritional terms.<\/p>\n
I frequently hear people in Canada discuss the nutritional content of foods, emphasizing \u201chealthy\u201d eating. I almost never heard the same said in France.<\/p>\n
Following the self-discovery clich\u00c3\u00a9, I would expect after seeing these two differences to realize a fact about myself\u2014that I preferred viewing food nutritionally or experientially. Instead, I left completely unsure of my own habits. Neither a new answer, nor an overwrite to an old answer, but a blank space.<\/p>\n
Food is an insignificant example, but I picked up many blank spaces in my travels. Should I live abroad or build a home? Should I focus on career or learning? Should I make many friends or a few deep ones? All blank spaces in my life.<\/p>\n
But there is value in a blank space. A blank space may not provide an answer, but it pushes you to search for questions you hadn\u2019t considered before. That search creates growth.<\/p>\n
Trying to fill a blank early, or pushing yourself to premature self-discovery isn\u2019t necessarily better. Once a belief is part of our identity, it calcifies. Logic doesn\u2019t easily remove what is chiseled onto our egos.<\/p>\n
After my first brush with losing myself abroad, I now try to look for experiences that generate this effect. I want to find experiences that don\u2019t answer, but disrupt who I am, so that I can be better after putting together the pieces.<\/p>\n
Travel is one way. Meeting new people and reading books outside your familiar aisles in the bookstore are others. Many of the same things that trigger self-discovery, can trigger new blank spaces. The difference, perhaps, is whether you rush to fill them with new answers or wait to see where they take you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two years ago, when I lived abroad, I made note of everything I experienced. Especially when those experiences contradicted the clich\u00c3\u00a9s I had heard about travel. Most of the time, my experience wasn\u2019t exactly original. I made great friends, partied a lot and now I miss the people and places. Honest, but pretty much what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,681],"tags":[590,622,457,22,589,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-2156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-happiness","7":"category-nc-mindset","8":"tag-answers","9":"tag-identity","10":"tag-life","11":"tag-philosophy","12":"tag-questions","13":"tag-travel","14":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n