I just returned from a Labor Day weekend trip to Mexico. Guadalajara region, mid-country.
It was my first time going to Mexico, and it won’t be my last.
I’ve always been impressed by the idea that travel is the BEST teacher. I’ve never had the means to be a globe trotter, but I’ve very much valued the trips I did take.
And this trip was a reset.
I’m still mentally recovering, with lots of reflection and multiple cups of coffee.
If you grew up urban, it’s eerily familiar
I’ve been to Hawaii, and driving around central Mexico feels like driving through the countryside of that island. Hilly, with mountains in the distance, and plentiful greenery.
There’s plentiful undeveloped land between the towns and cities. I have childhood memories (5 decades old) of bouncing car rides through the Korean countryside on semi-unpaved roads, passing side-by-side auto repair shacks, dogs loping through the streets, and steaming stalls of food vendors. Not too dissimilar from being a little ways out from Downtown L.A.
It’ll be familiar if you grew up near Koreatown or anywhere in Asia before the turn of the millennium.
The towns are unique to Central America or Europe, though. The central square, with the church along one side, and various (ancient) administrative buildings nearby, plus places to eat. Glass-hard cobblestones under your feet, of the standard, “bigger than a Post-It Note” size.
Then there was downtown Guadalajara. Zapopan, specifically.
Residential and business high rises, and indoor malls rivaling any major metropolis on earth; like Beverly Hills on 5 levels spread between 3 skyscrapers.
All overlaid atop restaurant and rent prices from the ‘70s and ‘80s.
All kinds of reset
There’s this scene from The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas.
He’s a Moor, embedded in a group of 12 Norsemen. Does not speak a lick of Old Norse.
Campfire sessions are blah-blah-blah. After a few months, they’re blah-blah-blah-cooking, and blah-blah-blah-knife. More time goes by, and they’re blah-blah-time for Erik to hunt, and blah-blah-your turn to watch tonight. Eventually, he can understand and speak everything.
By trip’s end, my medical Spanish had expanded to maybe one blah in 5. El Médico Guerrero Número 13.
Everything down to the vocabulary on the trip was a reset.
It’s not what you think
Why is travel the best teacher, re: Life?
I think it’s because it’s the up-in-your-grill antidote to provincialism. That small mindset you never knew was small-minded, never seeing beyond the borders of where you live “out in the provinces.”
You assumed that everyone else in the world lived the same way that you did—and if they didn’t, they were criminals and unfriendly, anyway. And since you knew everything you needed to know, there was no reason to venture forth.
Walking roads of another place, speaking with people, eating the food, and listening to the night sounds as you fall asleep—so different from the sounds at home—it’s hard to maintain your preconceptions.
You think you know, but as scientists have known for hundreds of years, you don’t really know until you test your hypothesis, until you put yourself out there.
Talk is cheap, whiskey costs money.
Unless you’ve lived on the front lines, studied the primary sources, or Gone To The Gemba, things are never what you thought they were.
It’s particularly a risk in our modern times, when most of our information comes from digital, increasingly curated sources.
But thinking that you know it all yet being dead wrong has always been a risk. “Provincialism” existed long before the Internet.
We are storytelling mammals, and we’re hardwired to tell ourselves comforting stories—mental constructs—of what the world is like based on the info at hand.
Now, most of that info isn’t actually “to hand.” It’s in news stories, memes, social media posts, and press releases, pelting our consciousnesses via our smartphones and laptops at digital lightspeed.
Traveling, nap of the earth, is the analog antithesis to this.
Why this is valuable
If you’re slaying dragons and moving your mountains, you’ve already learned the lesson of travel.
Things can be different.
The cost of living can be much less.
The fruit and coffee can be WAY more flavorful.
Families can support one another with great joy, and strangers can be welcomed.
New businesses can be created, and entire economies can be developed faster than you thought possible.
Not only can things be different; they ARE different.
Not only is travel the antidote to Getting Reality Wrong, it’s the antidote to fatalism.
In your face are the exceptions that disprove the rule that everything will stay the same, and that trying to better yourself is futile.
I highly recommend it.
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