Travelling and working; A valuable lesson

Travelling; they say it broadens your mind. When I first set off to Australia, I have to say that I was a little sceptical of that idea. I thought that it was a cliché that people would fall back on after going many places, but not moving forward in their career.  Even 6 months in, deep the midst of constant drinking and partying, I still felt that whilst I was having a great time, that wouldn’t translate into making me a more well rounded person.

Recently, I have been thinking about the valuable things that I, personally, have learnt whilst being away from home. I guess the most obvious one, although not all that obvious to me because of my time at university, is the sense that you are out here alone. There is no mum or dad to wash your dishes, clothes and bed sheets. There is no breakfast prepared on the table; hell there is no food in the fridge. I believe for many travelers, this is their first experience of that.

I think that the most important thing that I have realised, is just how important work is. For my whole life, I have not been too fussed about where I work. Even after University when there was a drive to start my career, I still succumbed to the idea that money was more important. Even though I had a stable lifestyle and I was by no means desperate, money seemed like the most important thing for me to chase. I always thought that the times I was unemployed were bad because I needed money.  Now I am realising they were bad because I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t learning, I wasn’t excersisng, I wasn’t reading; I wasn’t contemplating.

I think that as human beings, we are hardwired to be active. I don’t just mean that physically, I mean that we are goal orientated and should always be striving to hit targets. These might not be obvious targets, for example waking up on time to get to work - finishing the day at work. When you are travelling and you are living in a beautiful place like Australia, it is easy to have the idea that you are taking a year out to enjoy some down time. But if you are anything like me, and I think that most of us think similarly, then you start to get bored. Sitting around in the sun doesn’t seem so appealing. It’s no good to align your goals with going to the beach and getting drunk.  Something has stirred inside of me recently, and I believe it is the idea that we must work as much as we can, whilst we can.

I think it is natural to come to that conclusion at some point in life, for most of us. Why I think travelling is so important, is because it makes you realise that fact far sooner than people who stay in their comfort zone. The competition for jobs out here in Australia is so fierce that it brings out your innate competitive streak, and as a consequence we end up taking jobs that our outside of our comfort zone. This is not to say that there aren’t millions of driven, motivated people who don’t need to travel in order to get the bit between their teeth, it just means that travelling puts the bit there for some of us.