Travel doesn't lead to transformative experiences
The trope of self-discovery during travel in movies like Eat Pray Love and Wild highlights the incredible journeys of young people (who are often female). It was a hard-to-ignore expectation for my Watson Year. I indulged in the fantasy of being an independent woman, traversing through continents and I was excited for a year of self discovery and profound realization. I realize now that travel is not what brings self-discovery.
There were scenes in my Watson Year so far that you don’t see in movies. Walking back home on the dimly lit highway all while getting drenched by a rainstorm, getting catcalled by sailors asking if I have any cash for cigarette, seeking shelter from the piercing cold in an abandoned shack while waiting for a carpool ride from a stranger. While I imagined a romantic bike ride along the wineries of Burdundy, I found myself gasping for breath as I sprinted uphill to not miss the check-in deadline of the small BnB in the small French village where no one spoke English. No one told me to expect that all my clothes would smell like sweat because it would never dry in the humidity of the tropics. Sometimes I was stressed that the reason why I wasn’t having life-changing experiences was because I am not doing enough and that I need to do more to take a better advantage of the Watson Fellowship.
While there haven’t been spectacular spiritual awakenings or realization for a passion in life, I’m okay with this. The automatic social admiration for a solo traveling female demands that I get something profound from my Watson. I resist my urge to imbue meanings into every little lackluster experience I’ve had during my Watson. Traveling so far has given me the gift of understanding the preciousness of lame every-day achievements like catching the bus on time, or ordering food in the local language, and going to bed happily satisfied from a plate of delicious Tilapia from Lake Victoria.