Solo Travel with Intent - A Journey of Freedom and Self Discovery
In Absentia… Presence Found in the Space Between
November 2021, Memorial to the Murdered Jews Berlin, Germany
Knowing I would be posting this piece from Krakow, Poland – my first destination on my third three-week solo trip of the year – I got all kinds of inspired to share my ever-expanding point of view on untethered, solo travel. But I’m not going to write a piece about the overexposed, trending tropes that unnecessarily weigh down what it is to travel the world at our own pace, on our budget and with our own taste. The world doesn’t need another “How-to Travel Alone” blog with worn-out, discouraging words like awkward, loneliness and bored. It also doesn’t need another voice in the mix tackling infinite iterations of the same pejorative, sensationalized topic “Conquering the Fear of Dining Alone…” Come on. We’re all so much smarter, braver and stronger than that.
Instead I am hungry to jump in and reframe the narrative – right here, right now – around the transformative power of solo travel. It’s actually not about what or who isn’t there. To focus on what is absent, is to see the glass half empty and even for our traveling pessimists, there is so, so much more to focus on when traveling on our own than what is in absentia. Through solo travel we can come to find ourselves and meet ourselves in motion. It is the ultimate and hardest working pause we can take, a gift of self-connection that can unlock clarity, agency and resonance.
All that being said, I don’t want to dismiss or make light of any version or shape of apprehension anyone might have for traveling alone. My intention isn’t to contribute to the noise – the silly stereotypes, the played-out cliché discourse, the buzzkill current across the travel ether that seems to imply some of us aren’t already fully equipped with exactly what it takes to see this great big, wonderful world behind our own agendas and compasses. I want to find instead just the right words to inspire the ready but timid to convert their inertia into an empowering anthem of movement. I set out to write this piece with a hopeful and motivating, confident and no holds barred tone to be that outside force to gently rock these stuck souls free…
What seems at first like gumption, courage or rebellion to break away from social norms to travel on our own is really just a readiness and willingness to accept solo travel as a potential treatment for that thing that’s been gnawing at every bit of us from the inside out. When I talk about travel’s transformative powers I’m talking about its ability to affect us – not cure us – but move us literally and figuratively to feel and act in ways our soul’s been craving.
To travel our way is to find our frequency, to set our own rhythm to what truly moves us and to witness and live among those soulful stirrings that bring us closer to the truth and peace we’ve been seeking. Solo travel serves up a safe space away from the labels, boxes and roles we’re plastered with, held in or confined to at home. In that liberation, there is a beautiful and rare opportunity to learn how to trust our own company without judgment. There’s also the added bonus that we get to develop – sometimes for the first time in our adult lives – our own gut, our own taste and our sense of who we are without anyone watching. Even more rewarding still, there is ample occasion to reach deep within and listen to the pleading of our meek but mighty inner child who has been waiting for us to call upon them to awaken forgotten passions and rekindle curiosity for life’s simple wonders.
For me, the most exquisite part about traveling solo is letting go and feeling all that comes with recasting independence and agency into pure, unabridged alignment and discovery. No matter what we decide to do with our time away from home – stay in bed all day or site-see until our legs can carry us no further – we own and call every move in the playbook. We will summon and entertain unexpected meaning somewhere in between this freeing free will and the acceptance of what we need, who we are and why we’re there. To borrow a beloved concept from author Elizabeth Gilbert, it is here we will find our Big Magic. We will pick up mysterious reflections of ourselves almost everywhere - in nature, art, flavor, the couple in love at the bar, the dress in a shop window, the lush aromas wafting out of that sidewalk cafe. We will finally and suddenly come to see and celebrate the serendipity, coincidence and synchronicity that is all around us.
Even for the skeptics and fence-sitters of untethered solo travel, there is something undeniably appealing and provocative about forging such a one-sided, self-serving contract. In this case, I don’t think self-serving needs to imply selfish either. When we work on ourselves with good intent even though we are first to realize the benefit, it is impossible for these micro-transformations not to ripple out into the world with positive impact. When just one of us finds our calling, returns to an abandoned passion, re-centers back to grace or expresses gratitude contagiously, humanity as a whole benefits. As unearthed truths and peace dislodge and reassemble, reorienting within us, we end up stoking an unstoppable, joyous momentum within and all around us.
As I hit publish from my 25th solo country inside a new venture born from and inspired by movement, my wish and call to adventure to all stuck souls is that they finally take that leap of faith into travel’s accepting, wide open arms. Inside that journey, may they find peace, happiness and most of all… themselves.
Day One, Planty Park Old Town Krakow, Poland
