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Solo Travel Is Never Really Solo: A Birthday Epiphany

Much has been said about solo Travel, and how it needn’t be lonely and isolated. That you would meet people along the way, travellers and hosts alike. And so, while you may start out solo, it wouldn’t be the case for very long.

This story is not about that. It is about a different way that solo travel turns out not to be solo. The realisation etched itself slowly over my recent post-Blue Period years, and sharpened into relief when I returned from my birthday mission.

The Birthday Ambition

Teja in a faraway land

One year ago, I decided that on my next birthday I would be on Easter Island.

Like India, Easter Island had long been on my bucket list, the mystery of its moai and its faraway location a beacon to the little voyager deep inside me. It just wasn’t at the top, because it was far and difficult (i.e. expensive) to reach.

But I decided, at the end of 2016, that in 2017 I would flip my travel philosophy.

I would give mountains a chance, even though I’m usually a coastal creature. I would go to the destinations that I saved for ‘later’ because they were ‘too hard’. And I would find out what happens, if I switched my mind around like that.

But in order to do that, for various reasons, I must travel alone.

The Discomfort – and Allure – of Solo Travel

It was not very long ago that I first tried ‘real’ solo travel, in Tacloban. As an introvert who also finds novel social interaction mentally taxing, it took a lot to get to that space. And I did not take to it immediately.

“Because it is there.”

So I took a break. And the next time I tried solo travel again, was pretty epic – to Nepal and India.

But why did I not turn back after Tacloban?

The answer to that lies in a particular quirk in my personality.

I’m not an adrenaline junkie. Nor am I ‘addicted’ to travel. It isn’t the case that I am comfortable with the unknowns of solo travel, let alone crave it.

Certainly the uncertainty of new social situations is not – and probably never will be – exhilarating.

But I’m even less comfortable with stagnation.

And so, in a perverse sort of way, I’m not comfortable unless I also feel the underlying discomfort of evolution.

Maybe the Germans have a word for this complicated existential need. Surely it would be them, if anyone?

The Bugis Princess

“So how is the Bugis Princess, returned from around the world?”

So my Mother greeted me, when I came home from my recent Netherlands-Chile-Australia journey. She was referring to our seafaring ancestry – which I also alluded to in my pre-Nepal article. Most of mine came from her side, though my father’s side also has a substantial Bugis line. And while hers is not precisely a royal line, it wasn’t entirely far off the mark.

Perhaps this heritage explains my aversion to stagnation. After all, an archipelagic nation that does not explore runs the risk of being trapped on ever more crowded land.

The inconvenient child

This quirk to my personality is like the knot in an otherwise even-grained beautiful cut of wood.

It makes me sporadically take inconvenient choices, including sometimes ‘sabotaging’ my own successful trajectory. Just because things were feeling too predictable and safe.

When prevented and forced to achievements that are meaningless to me, I become sullen and unhappy – much like a caged tiger.

I know it makes me a frustrating child to have. It makes me only ‘almost’ the pride of the nation. I could have compared so well with other daughters! I might have been a high flyer!

Only, I could not confine myself into those boxes. I keep veering sideways when I could have kept going up.

My contrarian ways

It is this trait that drove me to specialise in environmental studies when I’m ‘supposed’ to have gone for medicine. This, that made me suddenly and completely out of character, sign up for the navy reserves.

Also this, that made me choose Wales for my advanced degree – precisely because Bangor didn’t have a large expat Malaysian community. Or much at all.

It was also this that made me take the gamble of a cross-cultural marriage.

And through all my inconvenient choices, my mother tried to soften all the risks and the dangers – to protect me from hardship.

Except… that’s not how growth works. And my need for independence clashed often with her need for security.

A real princess

It’s interesting, the image of a princess.

When I was a child, I read the fable of the Princess and the Pea. Even then it made no sense to me, why a real princess is determined by her ability to feel a pea from under a lot of mattresses. Whatever the fantasy of a princess is in fairy tales, it seemed to me that in real life, a princess actually had to be pretty adaptable.

After all, there’s a more than even chance that she would marry into the court of a foreign nation.

Attending the wedding of another real princess.

So if you think about it, a successful princess sealing an equal alliance is a woman who simultaneously embodies the essence of her own people’s identity, and yet also somehow gracefully adapts to another nation’s identity.

Today we live in a polarised world where there seems to be just two options, of hubris and disillusion. You are increasingly pressured to choose between the two.

There are the people who cling so tightly to their own identity that they make it restrictive and exclusive, or try at every opportunity to preach its acceptance by others. You could be disowned by family and friends for holding the merest dissenting view to the popular opinion.

And then you have the people who completely abandon their own identity – mainly because they want to reject their own.

So the bridges are empty, and grow ever emptier, even in an age of relentless travel.

A Line of Fierce Women

If I am ‘almost’ a high achiever, my mother actually is.

She is from the first post-independence generation of my country, educated in the optimism of the ’70s as the vanguard of professionals for the hopeful new nation.

She didn’t disappoint.

As a woman, she logged many national firsts and personal over-and-above contributions – but I have to stop short of giving details. Suffice to say that she more than meets the fevered dreams of feminism activists – but she achieved it without harbouring the harsh and confrontational attitude that is normalised feminism in… counterpart cultures. While being unabashedly and publicly outspoken.

And she did this from a starting point of great hardship. War is a great leveller of the fortunes of families.

My grandmother before her was also extraordinary – teacher, activist, humanitarian, experimenter of ideas, early adopter of technologies.

My female line is peopled with incredible women of knowledge, diplomacy, insight – both worldly and occult.

And one extraordinary man.

I can’t mention all this about my mother, without also noting my father.

My mother in university was awesome. She was fearsomely intelligent, and dominantly outspoken. Besides being a top student, she was also a competition-winning singer.

My dad was… not.

Yet, recognising all of this, he was nonetheless not at all intimidated. And he did the most baffling thing. He decided that my mother was exactly the one for him. Even though – or precisely because – she was so awesome that she might even overshadow him in life. For unfathomable reasons, he took that risk.

Disclaimer.

Now I’m not saying guys don’t choose cool, awesome women. But one that might eclipse him? And then afterwards take no action whatsoever to restrict her to make sure that this doesn’t happen? My mother couldn’t even be paraded as a trophy. She is famously not into adornments and self-beautification.

It’s not to say that my father doesn’t have other merits.

But if I were to choose his most valuable trait, it would be this. Because it is the rarest trait – worldwide, not just in the East. And I owe my existence to it… because by the time my mother was of marrying age, arranged marriages had fallen out of vogue!

(I cannot knock the culture of arranged marriages too much, because given the high occurrence of unusual women in my line, I am certain it is the main reason that my mother even exists in the first place.)

Solo travel: Wind and Wave

Solo travel is different than other travel in that you are forced to change your mode outwards. You must reach out and depend on the hospitality of the host nation. You face uncertainties and risks mainly with only your own resources. In a separate article I touched a little on why this is generally less palatable to Asians.

So I knew that my solo travel this year was especially hard on my mother. Precisely because it is not the typical way that Asians travel – especially Asian females.

I also knew from other female travel bloggers that the concern is not limited to me. Loved ones left behind are often shrouded with insecurity. Rejection is frequently reported – which likely stems from the fear of losing one’s child as she moves away, and maybe changes.

And again, people seem to think there are only two options: stubbornly staying still and push away those who wouldn’t likewise stay still; or be resigned that you will probably lose everyone anyway and therefore should stay for no one.

What a lack of imagination and daring.

If we have no choice but to face a time of high winds, then make a sail – or a wind turbine.

And if change disrupts the tick tock of an old routine, then set it to music and – dance.

If you would only dance together – then you won’t lose each other.

The Unfilial Filial Child

And this brings me back to my homecoming, and the epiphany that came upon me at the close of 2017.

The conventional mindset of my people, especially given the blessing of having great and eminent parents, is that I ought to be grateful. This should be expressed through filial obedience and removing as much worry and discomfort from them as possible.

And since my independence and need for travel and growth was hard on my mother, the right thing to do was to leave such notions behind.

I did not.

I moved out, and I followed the flow of the universe out into the world. And I began changing, absorbing – growing. Understanding people.

It was a bumpy ride.

But gradually, I noticed that I began to need to ask beforehand if my parents were home, if I wished to visit. My parents may be away – perhaps also travelling.

My mother relaxed more after I returned perfectly intact from India. She reads my blog and perhaps it helps. My dad follows me on Facebook and shows her my pictures, from when I find wifi.

She began to mention more people who did or knew of similar things as things I’m trying, rather than travel tales with horrifying ends. Her general approach grew more measured rather than defaulted to control.

Surprisingly, it appears that my demand for independence gave her independence as well.

Unexpectedly, it seems to be a good push to the task they already knew they had to do: be the first Malay generation to figure out a later-life identity, in this age of longer lifespans.

(Traditionally, the post-retirement life is to lie back and bask at the sight of one’s progeny. ‘Old age’ consists of being resigned to a slow, inactive, often sickly, wait for the end.)

And so, my solo travel was not solo.

It turned out, that my solo travels didn’t test me alone. Others were forced to ‘travel’ too.

2018 and Beyond

It is just as well that this is the case.

It is very likely I would continue to be inconvenient. I would probably never give my poor parents  the ability to rest on their laurels, free from the discomfort of uncertainty.

But on the other hand, it means never to be mired in complacency either.

Each of the past couple years, I grew into the neglected spaces of my self at a speed I can scarcely fathom. The universe brings me to new things and situations, and forces me into a faster and more varied succession of choices.

I do not know which way I would go in the space of the next year.

It is a space of growth and exploration. It is an unusual, eccentric life for which answers must be derived from first principles.

By definition I am forced to become more comfortable with the possibility of making an error. Not easy for someone who hates getting it wrong, and who also – secretly – just wants to rest and enjoy a milestone stage for a while.

And here is the other solo travel epiphany.

My mother enjoys feeling needed. I know she took it hard when I demonstrated that I could live on my own – because it implied that I did not need her for that anymore.

But the thing is, any average woman can keep house and make meals and deal with the routine responsibilities and chores of settled modern life. An extraordinary person is not needed just to repeat the standard solutions to generic problems. No one needed to teach me financial planning, for example. I simply derived it by extrapolating and combining from other basics. Yet I know basic financial planning is for some reason a mystic art to many people.

The irony is that it’s only by being released to venture into an uncharted, bespoke life, would I have the opportunity to need my unusual mother.

But mama, unfortunately this means, you too, will always have to bear the discomfort of evolution.

The post Solo Travel Is Never Really Solo: A Birthday Epiphany appeared first on Teja on the Horizon.



This post first appeared on Teja On The Horizon, please read the originial post: here

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