This is the first post in a series about my uncommon opinions.
The short of my travel philosophy: Traveling is nice, but people travel far too often because they overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs. Although a small group of people have legitimate cause to go out of their way, run of the mill tourists like myself should limit vacations to times when they are going to be in the area anyway (e.g. business or family event). I will use the rest of this post to attempt to explain my reasoning.
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Preface
There are real benefits to traveling. I would point you to Ben Casnocha's treatise on why he travels for a well-reasoned list of benefits. My main point here is not to say that traveling is worthless, but that when considering how much the benefits are overstated and the costs understated, it is probably not worth going out of your way to travel.
I also think it is important to recognize the differences between types of traveling. I see it as a continuum from the American tourist superficially "seeing the sights" with a tour package in Paris to the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. Certainly the latter is more worthwhile than the former. I often hear people tout their perspective on life by proclaiming "I buy experiences, not things," but I'm not sure a travel package in Paris is much of an improvement over a gold Rolex.
I also recognize that certain people have more to gain by traveling. People whose job security is dependent on their creativity could do well to take a sabbatical and do some traveling. Similarly, traveling might be worthwhile for people whose deepest interests have a high marginal return to traveling -- interests such as ancient architecture or tropical habitats. But even these rare individuals need to ask themselves, are the things that might be gained from the trip really worth the investment? I think for the run of the mill tourist the answer is almost always "not if I have to go out of my way."
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Overstated Benefits
Traveling is easy to romanticize. When people plan vacations, they often envision the cascading landscapes at sunset rather than the ordinary strip-mall-lined roads that will take them there. They are likely exaggerating the beauty and excitement of what they will see, and they are likely omitting the stressful and uncomfortable situations that they will inevitably encounter. Vacations rarely meet expectations and are sometimes devastatingly disappointing.
The good memories are probably not real. If, as I suggest, traveling rarely meets expectations, why then is it so rare for people to say how much their travels sucked? For one, people are usually unwilling to admit disappointment in something in which they invested so much physical and emotional capital. But people also have a remarkable ability to forget and overlook. At the surface, you probably remember really enjoying your vacations because the experiences that stick out in your memory are overwhelmingly positive. These are the things you took photos of, and the things you told your friends about over and over about how amazing they were -- it's easy to see why these selective experiences might not only hold a more prominent place in our memory, but how we might remember them as more positive than they really were.
Any event can be remembered positively. If we remember positively our travels and look back upon them fondly, why should it matter that they weren't actually that great? My response is that any event can be remembered positively if we perform the same tricks: 1. selective documentation and 2. in conversation, exaggeration of the positiveness of those events.
Any insights about culture are thin at best. Besides pleasure and good memories, another popular reason for traveling is to better understand cultures and your place in the world. To that I would say yes, there are differences between cultures worth exploring, but if that is your goal, you'd do better to study them from home. Ben Casnocha in a post 8/31:
It's said that after spending a week in China, you can write a whole book about the country. After spending a month in China, you can write a really nice magazine article about it. After a few months, a blog post. And after a year, you can't write anything, because you discover how little you actually know.
The desire to travel is inflated by social adoration and, in some places, political encouragement. People are less averse to spending their money on things that seem "good" or are socially adored. I think traveling is adored everywhere, and in some places -- Europe, for instance -- it is even politically encouraged.
There is a "grass is greener" bias. Places always seem more romantic and picturesque until you live there. For this reason, people overvalue exotic retreats compared to, say, local camping trips.
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Understated Costs
The decision is taken too lightly. For a lot of people the decision of whether to travel is a simple one: I have X number of days off from work this year, how do I want to use them? Understandably, a lot of people immediately think to use their "vacation days" for vacation. People want to get away from the 9 to 5, home for dinner monotony, and for most an exotic retreat sounds like a better option than staying at home to watch daytime television or catch up on chores. Too often people fail to see the opportunities beyond daytime television.
People value their time less during their "time off". Indeed, a day spent at home during time off might be seen as a day wasted -- a day that could have been spent traveling. I think in many cases people undervalue their time off because, again, they fail to see better ways of using it.
People underestimate the time-value of money, and many are even distrustful of money. I will discuss this more in an upcoming post, but I think you can gather the main points from my 6/16 post why I'm cheap.
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In Conclusion
To plan and go on a trip is to spend a lot of money and a lot of your most precious resource -- your time -- on something that is unlikely to add much to your life. A solution to this resource problem is to vacation only opportunistically, i.e. only if you are going to be in the area anyway.
I invite you now to tell me why I'm wrong. (Nicely, please.)
