Everyday we are bombarded with messages on how to extend our lives. Exercise daily and you’ll live longer. Don’t smoke because you’ll die young. Eat this, do that, don’t drink this, don’t do that.
Science and medicine have evolved and humans are, in fact, living longer than ever before. Yet we’ve still got it all backwards.
I don’t see the point in living until 110, if you don’t make use of the years in which you are most physically able. By the time we reach our 20's, we are conditioned to finish school, so that we can get a job, that we can work away at for the next 40 years, until we retire, and eventually die. During these 40 years, not much change takes place. Sure, one may get married, have kids, buy a house, all the standard monumental life events take place. But the majority of your days are more or less the same. Months turn into years and when you look back you realize you haven’t actually done much with your life.
When you travel, everyday brings new change. The people you interact with change, your environments change, your modes of transportation change, your home bases change. And the longer you travel, the deeper these changes will go. Your relationships may change, your morals may change, and your personality may even change.
And time is simply a measure of change.
The concept of the clock often allows us to forget this. It seems as if time is passing with every stroke of the second hand. But if nothing is changing, is that time really passing? If we all stopped moving, if the earth stopped rotating, and if the planets stopped orbiting, would time still pass?
This idea, that time is a measure of change, is exactly why a couple months on the road may seem like years in hindsight. You’ve experienced so much change in such a short period of time, compared to what you would have experience in your ‘normal’ life.
Therefore, if you fill your life with change, you will feel as if you’ve lived longer. There is no better way to do this than to travel.
Take an indefinite amount of time off and see the world. Do this while you are still adaptable to change. Do this while having a return date doesn’t matter, because you don’t have a mortgage to pay or a family to support. Do this while you can still walk for an entire day, while you can still dance all night long. Don’t take your adaptability for granted. It wont be around forever. You could lose it tomorrow for all you know.
Do this, and I promise it will feel like a lifetime.