the bonds of travel
Travel forms tight bonds among people. A passing thought crossed my mind recently: Â I became close (or much closer) with many of my really good friends because of a shared travel experience. It may seem like a pretty obvious thought. And I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to some pretty amazing places in my life. (The experience isn’t limited to friends. I also realized I became a lot closer with colleagues after traveling together, too.)
This yarn of thought then continued unraveling. I began to wonder about life 150 years ago, and what it was then that made people form tight bonds. If the whole escapade of flight and cross country/continent leisure travel wasn’t possible, what was it that formed lasting relationships?
Travel seems to work this way for a number of reasons:
- shared experience – doing anything together provides opportunity to reminisce forever
- prolonged experience – enduring 2+ days of nonstop anything will have an effect
- close quarters – it’s hard to disconnect / find alone time while traveling
- no privacy – it’s hard to pretend to be anything other than what you are when all of the above are happening
It’s hard to replicate these conditions in the average day-to-day, so how do we form the tight bonds (the incredible relationships) that are borne out of incredible adventure in our daily lives? Can we?
(footnote: this is a running theme for me – trying to connect the dots on why people become friends with some people and not with others. expect more on this subject later. also i looked briefly for other writing on the psychology of travel, but didn’t find anything compelling. let me know if you do.)
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Another great post!
I've got to give the nod to point 4 – no privacy. The filters are off and you've got to deal with people, bad traits and all.