I didn’t always take the long way through. I used to travel like I was racing a clock-squeezing as much in as possible, measuring success by how many places I could say I’d seen. I thought movement meant progress, and speed meant I was doing it right.
That belief began to fracture in 2016, fifteen days into a trip to India I wasn’t prepared to be changed by. I went on a mission trip early in my traveling life, expecting to serve, to help, to give. What I didn’t expect was how much I would receive. Through vibrant color, shared meals, open doors, and a generosity that asked nothing in return, I began to understand how little we actually know about wealth. I watched as people who had far less materially live with more joy, more presence, and more peace than I had ever known. Love moved freely there-across language, culture, and background-and for the first time, I felt God quietly reordering my understanding of what mattered.
When I returned home, the culture shock was deeper than I anticipated. We didn’t live the way I had just experienced. We didn’t welcome people into our lives so easily. We didn’t share what we had. We wasted, rushed, excused ourselves, and tied our joy to what we owned. I had only been in India for two weeks. But it produced something in me that nearly thirty years in America had not.
That was when I began to realize that travel might be the only thing you can spend money on and return richer than before-richer in perspective, gratitude, compassion, and humility. And that realization slowly changed how I would travel forever.
Now, nearly a decade and almost fifty states later, I’ve learned a few lessons along the route. Slower roads, fewer boxes, deeper noticing.
This is a space for those who suspect there’s more to travel-and life-when we stop rushing and start presently experiencing the world one moment at a time.
