Ben Groundwater
May be paid to see the world but it’s a job he’s certain to never take for granted. Here, he explains why.
been to, that feeling should never go away.
You’re reading Escape, so you get that. You love to travel too. But still, it pays to remind yourself of the glory of this pursuit, of the value of spending money on experiences rather than things.
Travel won’t help you attain the traditional measures of success, the big house and the fancy car and the career with the frequent promotions, but it will change your life in more ways than you’ll probably ever fully appreciate.
Will I ever get sick of that? No chance. That’s why I’m dedicating this column to celebrating the glory, the beauty, and the excitement of the experience that has brought us all here in the first place.
Travel is amazing
It changes you as a person. It magnifies your passions and diminishes your distastes. It reveals new depths to you. It strips you bare of pretense. It shows that you’re capable of things you never thought possible, while revealing flaws that you’d probably rather ignore.
Travel is infinite possibilities
It’s fate and chance and the path of your life thrown open to the karmic wheel of fortune. Every time you travel, every tiny decision you make could change everything. Take the train, or the bus. Talk to that person, or don’t. Wander into that bar, or the next. Every step is a real-life chooseyour-own-adventure that could irreversibly alter the person you are.
Travel is perspective
It’s a way of realising that the problems that feel so real and important to you back home maybe don’t mean so much in the grander scheme.
It’s also a way of realising that those physical things you desire, those gadgets and garments and possessions that impress your