I used to think the point of traveling was to see as much as possible. More cities. More coastlines. More national parks. More stamps on the mental map.
There is something satisfying about being able to say, I’ve been there. To collect places. To know which neighborhood to stay in, where to get coffee, what road to take, which beach is actually worth the drive. And I still love all of that.
But lately, I’ve been wondering if the real gift of spending years moving through unfamiliar places has very little to do with how much of the world I manage to see. Maybe the goal is to stay curious. Maybe the point is to keep resisting the urge to decide too quickly that the way I already know how to live is the right way.
I hope I’m still doing that at 70.
I hope I still want to know why a town celebrates the thing it celebrates, why somebody chooses to stay somewhere I couldn’t wait to leave, why another person gives up everything familiar to start over somewhere new.
Because I think one of the quiet dangers of getting older is how easy it must be to confuse familiarity with truth. You spend enough years doing things one way and suddenly it becomes the way.
The neighborhood you would live in. The kind of job that makes sense. The way a relationship should look. What counts as success. What people should wear. How families should operate. What kind of place is worth visiting. Who is interesting. Who isn’t.
And eventually, if you aren’t careful, the world gets smaller without you ever actually going anywhere.
Travel has a way of disrupting that. You arrive somewhere and realize the thing you thought was obvious isn’t obvious at all. Maybe everyone eats dinner later than you do. Maybe nobody is in a rush. Maybe a place you wrote off ends up being the place that surprises you most.
I think that’s what I’ve started loving most about being somewhere new. The reminder that my version of normal is only one version, and I don’t want to lose that.
I don’t want to become someone who responds to everything unfamiliar with, “Well, that’s not how we did it.”
I don’t want to stop asking questions because I’ve decided I already know enough.
There is a version of aging that scares me far more than wrinkles ever could: becoming so certain of myself that nothing new can get in. I hope I never become too comfortable to change my mind.
That doesn’t mean having no opinions or abandoning the things I believe in every time I encounter something different. Curiosity isn’t the same thing as agreement. You can disagree with someone and still want to understand how they got there.
You can decide a place isn’t for you without deciding there is nothing worthwhile about the people who love it.
You can know what kind of life you want and still be fascinated by people who chose something entirely different.
That feels increasingly important to me. Because the older I get, the less impressed I am by certainty. I’m much more drawn to people who can say, “I never thought about it that way.”
People who ask another question instead of rushing to give an answer. People who can enter a room, a city, a culture or a conversation without needing it to immediately confirm everything they already believe. That is the kind of person I hope all this traveling is helping me become.
I hope that someday, when I’m older and moving a little slower, I’m still the person who wants to take the scenic route.
I hope I still catch myself saying, “I didn’t know that.” And instead of feeling embarrassed by it, I hope I feel excited. Because maybe seeing the whole world was never really the point, I'm not sure anyone can.
There will always be another place I won’t get to, another story I’ll never hear, another way of living I’ll never fully understand. Maybe the goal isn’t to finish the list. Maybe the goal is to never feel like I’ve finished learning.
So yes, I still want to travel.
I still want to see new coastlines and unfamiliar cities and all the places I’ve saved in my phone for someday.
But more than that, I hope I keep letting those places change me.
I hope the older I get, the bigger my world feels.
And when I’m 70, I hope there is still something out there that makes me say:
Tell me more.