"Moi tu m'parles pas d'âge"*

“Party people and lost souls” is how she described the crowds she’s been meeting on her adventure so far, and the way she said it clearly made me understand that she saw herself as a lost soul. This is not the kind of wisdom I was expecting from a university student between two semesters, on the first solo trip of her life, but I got it.

Before declining to join the pub crawl that was starting, I could only offer worthless pieces of advice along the lines of “you’ll see when you are my age”. It is totally normal that you don’t know if you picked the right major, and if it’s what you really want to do later. You’ll have plenty of time to figure it out. By the end of the conversation she didn’t seem convinced, but I can’t blame her. I used to be in a similar place and it took me forever to convince myself.

I’m easily ten or fifteen years older than the average backpacker. Not that big of a deal, but it’s hard not to think about it when you’re mostly surrounded by a crowd that fits into the same narrow demographic.

Just to be clear: I don’t have anything against you. In fact, I might just be a little jealous of you, and I’d love to see even more people follow your lead. I’ve been on my fair share of travel around the world, but I often wish I did something similar when I was younger. Give myself an extended period of time away from everything, in order to either focus on myself, or completely lose myself.

This is maybe the spectrum of reasons why you make such a decision. Most of the younger people I’ve met just try to get away and “do something else”. Something that’s not studies, work, or the responsibilities showing up on the horizon. None of them are saying it out loud, but you can easily read it between the lines.

I get something a little different whenever I talk to people who are my age, or slightly older. Like this guy who desperately wanted to quit his engineering job to travel for much longer than this end-of-year break (which made me feel like listening to myself six months ago) (of course I told him to do it). Or this mom who really pushed me to keep moving for even longer, because “it gets boring if you stay at the same place for too long”. I was glad to hear that all she wanted to do since she retired was to travel the world as much as possible with her husband and two daughters.

The main takeaway could be that there’s just not enough time, and it might all come down to when you get to understand it. Some will get it early, others will need more time. But it’s better late than never.

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[This is probably going to be my last post for 2022. I wanted to use this opportunity to thank the people who come here to read whatever I feel like writing. Your support is very much appreciated ❤️]

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*apologies to my non-french-speaking non-football-fan audience but I had to

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