Self-Discovery

I’ve always been wrapped up in the idea of my own identity. Lately, though, I’m trying to let that go. Identity is a curious thing. It’s tricky to define, yet most of us carry some concept of who we are, some internal story we tell ourselves. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who’d spent time at an ashram in India. He went there to meditate, to simply be, perhaps to do nothing at all.

At some point in recent history, travel transformed from a luxury into a cultural expectation. The rise of social media has dramatically changed how and why we travel. A 2019 study found that 40% of millennials choose travel destinations based on “Instagrammability” rather than cost or cultural experience1. While technology has proliferated travel information and made the world more accessible, it has also shifted our motivations in subtle ways.