I type this entry having just warded off an anxiety attack. You see, I came extremely close to missing the Naples-bound train recently.
I arrived at the Lambrate station of Milan’s troubled metro system to the announcement of an eight-minute delay. Since I would need to transit to another metro line in order to reach the Rogoredo railway station, I ended up with little choice but to hail a passing taxi.
Years ago, the sight of the meter inside the cab climbing higher and higher would’ve brought on heart palpatations. I would’ve felt moved to post a Facebook status update cursing Milan’s inefficient public transportation, with customer service on the other line.
But over the years I’ve realized, much to the chagrin of my artery walls, that situations like this are precisely the reason I travel rather than stay in one place. If you forgo travel because you fear uncertainty, get over it: Travel is the best way to learn stress coping skills!
Eat, Pray, and Freak Out
Buddhist doctrine states that transformation depends on meditation, and that meditation requires knowledge. The way I interpret this is that if you always feel happy but your life never changes, you lack knowledge, and thus can neither meditate nor achieve happiness.
I didn’t have much knowledge of the world when I first set foot onto Indian soil, in March 2009. In fact, it was the first time I had traveled in a developing country. Although I knew India would be chaotic and crowded, I eagerly awaited the “Eat, Pray, Love” part.
Unfortunately, I would neither enter an ashram nor meet anyone like the chick Julia Roberts plays during my time in India. I was stressed out due to my own set of life circumstances (I’ll get to those in a minute), and traveling with an equally-stressed friend.
The malaria pill I took made me vomit daily. And a train operator mistakenly told us we’d slept through our arrival in Goa. And a hustler at New Delhi Railway Station swindled us into a Taj Mahal taxi package. And my camera broke — and so did my computer!
Each successive stressor brought on an even greater tantrum, argument or panic attack than the previous one had, to the point where I left India never wanting to travel again. I quite literally kissed the clean, spacious ground upon landing in Austin, Texas.
Locked Up
This feeling didn’t last long. To start with, remember the “life circumstances” I mentioned earlier? Yeah, I was unemployed. Worse, I’d been fired from my position as a restaurant server. Still worse, I couldn’t find another job, even another crappy restaurant one.
The comfortable life whose memories had brought me solace as I warded off beggars in Rajasthan would, by the end of the hot Texas summer, make me more stressed than my trip had. Only with me alone and stationary, this stress remained inside me.
Let’s relate this to the original Buddhism metaphor: The knowledge my trip to India had bestowed upon was that, by encountering and reacting to stressors, I was actually releasing the stress, a transformation of sorts.
Remaining in a civilized place like Austin diminished my prospects for further such transformation in two ways: I never encountered situations that seriously tested me as a person; If I did and reacted to them like I had in India, I would be locked the fuck up.
You get the picture: I needed to travel more, for travel was the only way to ensure I would be constantly tried and tested.
The Tipping Balance
I would love to tell you that I am now nonstop-zen when I travel, that bullshit like today’s delayed metro doesn’t even so much as make me sweat. But the fact is that transforming yourself from a complacent, developed-country dweller into a global guru is a process.
I had a particularly self-doubting moment in Bolivia last year. My surly tour guide left me at the Chilean border without the bus ticket I had purchased. I had no cash left; and the nearest ATM was 50 miles away. Thinking I was stranded, I went nuts on the bitch.
I would pass my first days in Chile in meditation, and the conclusion I reached surprised me. Although I’d arrived feeling ashamed and disappointed that I reacted as I did after nearly a year of full-time travel, it dawned on me: I almost never got stressed out anymore.
Indeed, the inclination of people who lack knowledge about the world is to become easily stressed while acquiring that knowledge. Most therefore stop the knowledge acquisition process without realizing their progress and thus, never fully transform.
But at some point the balance tips in the other direction, your propensity to act to solve problems out of wisdom will eventually eclipse your ignorant reactions to them. So travel as much as you can, dear reader, and I promise you will soon transform.
Robert Schrader is a travel writer and photographer who’s been roaming the world independently since 2005, writing for publications such as “CNNGo” and “Shanghaiist” along the way. His blog, Leave Your Daily Hell, provides a mix of travel advice, destination guides and personal essays covering the more esoteric aspects of life as a traveler.
