Last updated on January 8, 2023
Dear Young Dreamer,
The end of the school year is here and freedom whispers on the air. Your attention wanders in these final days of lectures, homework, and classroom chatter. Trust me—I understand why. Although the world thrust upon me “adult status” many years ago, I remember the keen yearning of adolescence. A yearning to my spend days hunting through the yard, chasing my brothers, and feeling the sugary slide of Gatorade washing away the summer heat. Or in truth, in my high school years I yearned to sleep until noon and have my parents just leave me to myself. And though you no doubt appreciate summer’s freedom, your emails tell me that you’re looking ahead to what comes next.
Your thoughts are jumbled right now with the woes and stresses of your these difficult years. The world expects a lot of you: school, homework, jobs, college planning, extracurriculars … the list goes on and on. Although you’re on the cusp of adulthood, you’re not there yet. Which means you war with the twin duties assigned to you: honor your childhood yet plan your future. You dream of being a writer or an engineer, of being a nurse, lawyer, architect, social media maven. You haven’t told me what you want to be “when you grow up,” but know this: for most people, our jobs are not a single thing, but an evolving process. Asking you to name it now is unfair—instead pursue something you’re good at that also lights you up inside. That’s where the magic happens. Happiness lies at that intersection. Instead of an unmitigated: Follow Your Dreams. I say dream big put stay practical, for that’s how to achieve the biggest dreams.
It’s the practical part that most people miss. You wrote that you wanted to “just get through this.” Even the most idyllic childhood has its obstacles, and yours was far from idyllic. But a setback—or even 20—won’t prevent you from reaching your dreams if you stay rooted in the practical, in the actions you can take to bring yourself closer to your dreams. Study hard. Save aggressively. Chart a course ahead and then actually stick to it. As rough as life can be, hold onto dreams that light you up inside. Your dream of world travel—hold tight to it and set it as the benchmark for your decisions. You wrote that travel is your way out, it’s your way forward. It was for me, too. It was a goal I believed would finally signal that I had made it through to the other side of my troubled background. I made it there. You can, too.
At no other point in your life will society give you permission to dream like you can now. You don’t need that permission, of course. The very notion of someone else codifying your life based on their life is false. I urge you, fight against those who ask you to conform. But temper it with grace and acceptance, for you are still young, still subject to the will and best interests of those who love you. There is good and rightness in that.
Young Dreamer, you wrote to me with the conundrum of your travel dreams. You hear the siren call of travel, and you wonder how you, a teen, can make your dream a reality. You take classes and learn information that holds no interest most days—facts and figures you can’t fathom that you’ll ever need. It’s true and you’re right—you don’t need most of it. But you do need the ability to process those facts, to analyze the world around you, synthesize information, and above all, to think for yourself. These exact skills you’ve learned in school will help you overcome obstacles that stand between you and your dreams.
When other adults ask for travel advice, I tell them just to do it: decide you can travel and find the way to make it happen. I tell them, “traveling now will change the direction of your life.” Because longterm travel does just that. Travel changes the course of your life and can jumpstart your quest to discover the life you were meant live. The questions answered by life on the road can be found elsewhere, but not as quickly, not as deeply. Travel is a boot camp for life that is hard to replicate with other life experiences.
But you present me with a conundrum of my own because I cannot orchestrate your future, and neither can you, in many ways. Your parents’ decisions and economic status dictate if you holiday in Europe, join student exchange program, or work full-time.
Given that your parents and fate’s capricious whims have shaped your life until now, I understand your struggle. How do we make your travel dreams stay alive, how do we get you closer to making this dream a reality? Because, more than anything, I want you to maintain the flaming beauty of your dream of travel the world. I want you to hold tight to this belief that you can travel young. It’s a dream some tout as wishful thinking, deeply unpractical, or some may even level the ultimate insult: they tell you you’re naïve, that you’ll grow out of it.
It is my deepest wish that you never do.
You will grow and change so quickly in these coming years. You will fall in love with people, with new ideas, and—if you’re lucky—with a line of work that brings you joy. Travel is a beautiful dream but not an exclusive one. It’s a dream that can last a lifetime for there are ever more corners of the world to see, foods to taste, and people to meet. So although I could have prefaced this letter with the acknowledgement that dreams shift and change—for that is the absolute truth—it is my hope that together we can light a spark for travel that carries you through the coming years. A plan for travel that acts like a silent ship running alongside your life as you take your first solo steps into the world. It will be there waiting for you, always inviting you to step on board when you have the time. It’s there waiting for you, asking you to make life, career, and financial decisions that keep your travel ship on course, running parallel to whatever life you build.
And now you’re wondering if I’m crazy and carried away. I slip into “ramble mode” according to my niece; she’s been subjected to these whims of thought often enough.
No matter. The truest lesson I can share with you is that traveling young will change you. The desire to travel goes deeper than a flippant answer to the question “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Travel is not an answer to any question, but rather a path you take to arrive at an answer that is more honest and true to who you are and what you are meant to do.
You’re in an in-between land caught between a child and adult; it’s a lovely and strange place. It’s a time when you have freedom to figure out who you are. But can I be frank? On the verge of turning 30 this year, I remain answerless. Actually, every time I’m sure I have the answer, it changes … which is, perhaps, the lesson. I wish someone had told me that who you are evolves with each new experience and each tragedy you face, with every obstacles you overcome and every moment of pure joy.
Let’s shift back to right now Young Dreamer, because your quandary has you discouraged. You believe travel is unattainable.
I once thought that, too. I once thought long-term travel was reserved for the rich, for the clever, for the people who had something I lacked. I lived in a place of seeking permission. I looked at my peers—my best friends and those in my classes—and assumed that their biggest dreams were my ceiling. If none of them dreamed of traveling then it was surely out of reach.
Pushing through the naysayers is the hardest task ahead of you. Look beyond the society’s rules and permissions based on your color, class, gender, or age. Realize that if you dream it—if you hold something in your heart and want it enough to move mountains, then there is validity and goodness in your dream.
The limitations and many the reasons you can’t travel right this instant frustrates you. I get it. But one day soon your circumstances will change and it will be up to you alone to assess your life. You alone must believe that long-term travel is possible for someone like you. Grasp tightly to the belief that you will take a gap year abroad, or leave on a mission trip for a year. Defend fiercely your goal to study abroad during college or find an international job.
Now may not be your time to travel. Accept that without losing hope. So many factors play into this part of your life—parents, money, family politics, national politics, education—the list is long. By maintaining hope and faith that you will travel, options you never dreamed possible will appear. When you believe, that’s when we can explore the world from the perspective that someone in exactly your situation—be you poor or rich, troubled or not—can travel someday. All you need to know is that it is possible, and from there we’ll find the opportunities to make it happen.
When you accept a decision as fact, you begin to see opportunities that you never noticed. Joseph Campbell says,
Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.
And in that spirit Young Dreamer, with a summer of freedom ahead of you, I leave you with practical ideas that may take you closer to your dreams. Some won’t be right for you. You might hate a couple of them. And you definitely need to discuss a couple with your parents. But look for one that sparks an idea of how to keep that travel ship floating alongside your life. Which idea nudges you closer to bringing travel into your life.
- Find an international pen pal: When I was growing up this involved actually mailing letters via the post, but now with email and Facebook (and still old-fashioned letters too) you can develop a friendship that spans borders. This sounds antiquated in a way, but a German friend of mine exchanged letters for years with an American girl and they became such good friends that by their high school and college years they spent the summers at each others houses. There are tons of sites that help connect pen-pals but Students of the World is good, safe place to start (and be a safe internet user when chatting with others, always check first with your parent).
- Arrange a student exchange: The premise here is that you spend a few weeks up to an entire school year living abroad with a family that has agreed to house and feed you and send you to school. A French student attended our high school for a semester and it was very cool to meet her and get to know her (and she got to really practice her English!). AFS USA and Youth for Understanding are both very credible and both offer scholarships of some sort too.
- Start a business: This one seems like the odd man out, but really if you can’t travel now you could take the initiative to start your own business—the people who come into your life as you delve into that world of becoming an entrepreneur could very well be the people who help you create the opportunities to travel later on. Plus, it can be good fun, a good use of your time, and at the very least you’ll learn tons. :)
- Fundraise for a good cause: If you know of something happening overseas that you care about, why not find a creative way to fundraise for the cause and then donate that money to an organization helping to solve that issue? This not only brings you right into contact with the places you want to visit, but you are helping your friends learn and care too.
- Read a lot of good books: The best stories will take you out of your situation and right into the lives of other people from all over the world. Reading will give you some of the nuances of a culture and will make you even more ready to meet and interact with the locals once you arrive in your dream destination. This page lists out tons of book suggestions for each country, or ask your English teacher for a recommendation for a country you’d like to visit, I bet she’d be thrilled to help you find a good book.
- Take a mission trip with your church: If you’re part of a church or religious group it’s very common for these groups to place an emphasis on service, and in many cases when you join a program you spend some really fun weeks and months raising the money for your trip.
- Join a travel writing program: Consider honing other skills that bring you into the world of travel, a good course takes you through some of the skills and ideas you’ll need on the road if you hope to share your trip with others.
- Learn: More than anything, if the rest of these aren’t a good fit, keep finding things that make you light up inside and learn more about those, even if it’s not your assigned homework. Earlier this year I shared a big list of free courses you could use to learn the languages of the places you want to visit, or even take classes about astronomy, photography, programming, or really anything you love. Listen to international music, practice cooking recipes you hunt down online … take the initiative to creatively bring elements of travel into your life.
Young Dreamer, I so appreciate hearing from you. I love knowing that you can’t imagine your future without travel. More than college and work, my one-year round the world trip changed the course of my life. I am humbled that you reached out, that you cared enough to email a kindred soul—never lose that pluck for it’s more valuable a trait than you yet know.
Travel young, travel far. Never stop dreaming.
~Shannon
Exactly! Most of the time, we just have to take a moment for ourselves, listen and boom! we realize that we have the answer all along :) And it is such a refreshing feeling whenever that happens.. It’s like something’s saying, “See? I told you. You got this! All you have to do is believe and take a step forward.”
“Travel is not an answer to any question, but rather the path you will take to arrive at an answer that is more honest and true to who you are and what you are meant to do.”
This line got stuck in my brain. It is actually true.. Most of the time we need time to go somewhere, just be with nature for us to realize who we really are and decide on our own about what’s the next step to take :) Also, travelling reminds me how beautiful life is and that once you set out to find the answer, you’ll sure to find it because God is everywhere waiting for us to hear Him out.
Love the post Ms. Shannon :)
I so glad the post resonated, thank you for sharing your own thoughts. There is something about the internal quiet when you’re traveling that helps you tap into the answers and messages out there waiting for us. :)
Need more adults like you in my life. Being an 18 year old who can only think about travel with the most conventional “get a job get a mortgage settle down” family is exhausting and demoralising !!! This helped so much thank you !! Just what I needed xxx
I am so glad that it resonated Olivia. It can be tough to shape the life you want. I wish you the best of luck as you work on bringing travel into your life these coming years. This pose I wrote might strike a chord too: https://alittleadrift.com/2015/11/seven-year-reflections/ — It’s about how to drown out the noise and make the hard choices that reflect your goals, not the goals of others.
Six months! So soon, and how wonderful. Congrats on getting everything enough to leave (and yay for long term travel and staying out there in the road!). I appreciate you sharing tips and offering to allow readers to contact you. Best of luck, safe travels, and let me know if there is anything I can do to help. :)
Thanks so much for mentioning our teen travel blogging mentorship program – it is changing lives!
I, too, was entrusted to travel at an early age by my parents – a fact which i am grateful for every single day. but no matter how old you are when you start traveling, having a sense of curiosity about the world is the best tool in your toolkit!
LOVE these resources!
You are very welcome, I know you have been working in this space with youth and travel and really have a wonderful program from the writers at heart who dream of travel. :)
This post, no this whole blog is incredible. I can’t wait to start travelling and your blog gave me most of the inspiration. It was maybe last year when my mum came home from work (she works at a college) with a gap year brochure that I began thinking about it. I looked at so many (Fiji certainly caught my eye) but then i thought why go to just one country for a few weeks, why not go around the world. More recently I’ve been looking at different pre-organised RTW trips to start with before I do some solo travelling and they do look interesting. I’ve only been out of Western Europe a few times, I live in England and have taken holidays to Spain, France, Italy and Holland, the furthest I’ve been is Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and Lapland in Finland when I was a small child. Although I’ve been to a few countries, I don’t feel satisfied enough to continue life in the way society wants. I’ve always been dependent on my mum and it’s my younger sister who everyone thinks will just get up and travel, but I don’t want to do what everyone expects me to do. I want to see the world and experience different things. One thing definitely on my bucket list is to spend some time with monks as I’ve always been interested in their way of life, can you suggest anything? I’d also like to spend some time in Egypt and Morroco if you know anywhere thats good. Sorry I’ve dwindled on a bit, I just want to say thanks for inspiring me.
Hi Abby, thanks so much for sharing your experience here, it sounds like you’re on the cusp of some big travel! I love that your mum gave you the gap year brochure — it is great that you have someone supportive and there encouraging you to take a trip overseas. The tour idea might be a good way to get you started on your trip, but I think once you’re on the road you’ll gain enough confidence to tackle some regions solo. Have you thought of perhaps using a company like G Adventures http://www.gadventures.com/ to land in a region and travel for a few weeks or months, then set of on your own after that? Thailand is a great spot to learn from the monasteries there, or Nepal if you have some months to give for teaching. Southeast Asia is the spot I love to recommend for beginners on their own because it’s really safe and there’s a decent tourist infrastructure in the region. Plus the food is delicious and the culture is wonderful! I would love to talk more if you’re keen, just shoot me an email and we can delve into some of the specifics.
This trip sounds wonderful and I am so happy you are deciding to act now on your dream to travel and take a less conventional path. I look forward to chatting more. I have a few posts coming up in the next month about finding work abroad post-graduation, and some options you have beyond just travel too! :)
Only just read this, Shannon. It’s beautiful.
Aw shucks, thanks lady.
Shannon – thank you so much for this. I teared up reading it because it was such a beautiful piece of writing & spot on in every way!
I’m on the cusp of graduation & my life is pretty planned out but my heart is tugging me in a different direction – I know in my heart someday I’ll get to fulfill this yearning to travel more fully (instead of dichotomising my “real life” and my “travel life”)
Just… thank you for taking the time (: Gives me so much hope to know there are adults like you who are so committed to keeping alive youthful dreams (instead of telling us we’re naive / idealistic) :D Rock on, Shannon – I’ve been a longtime fan!
HI Sarah, I am so glad that this piece resonated with you. Graduation is a really tough time and I know a lot of adults forget what it felt like to transition like that, to be asked to put on the mantel of adult — sadly by that many adults actually mean “now give up your dreams and make money).
Good luck and please don’t hesitate to let me know if there is something I can do to help, or merely just lend an ear :)
I feel like you were talking directly to me with this post. I feel so lost in my life right now and the only thing that I know that I REALLY want to do with my life is travel. But according to everyone else, that’s not a viable life option. I know that people are wrong and I can make it work but I keep using my age as an excuse to hold me back. In all reality, I am terrified of traveling right now because it seems like everyone who goes out and sees all these amazing things are at least “twenty-something” and I haven’t even hit 19 yet.
Hmm, a lot of the bloggers tend toward the mid-twenties, but there are definitely people your age out there traveling Sky, take heart! I met a lot of 18-22 year olds in Australia and Southeast Asia when I was there. I think the biggest thing stopping many people is money, but if you have or can save up, or finagle it hit the road and you will be amazed by the diverse ages, lifestyles, cultures, and people also traveling round the world :)
I just read this and although you may go not read my response – I think you should definitely go do it! I’m 19 and I’m leaving in less than six months to the UK to travel. I haven’t told anyone I don’t really intend on coming back just yet but it’s so exciting! Save up a lot and remember you can find work sometimes or even use couchsurfing.org and volunteer at places that offer free accommodation! If you read this and want to talk more, email me at kaitlynturner@hotmail.com. This is my first trip and I’m terrified but so excited! I definitely understand how you feel.
Thank you for this Shannon! I’ve had this dream for a long time and after I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Mr. Ferris, I started thinking that I might be able to do it. Since then, I have googled a lot and have found all of you awesome and inspirering travel bloggers! It has really changed my mind about traveling.
My boyfriend and I have been working towards becoming location independant. It’s now finally working out, and we’ll set out on an amazing trip later this month! Wow. And I have you and other travel bloggers to thank… So, thank you! Writing these sort of things are really changing people’s lives! :)
Cheers!
I am so excited for you Celia — congrats on deciding to act on that dream to travel so soon. I really appreciate you sharing your story here and let me know if there is anything I can do to help you plan. Safe travels and have a wonderful trip! :)
As someone who is in that in between age this post was absolutely wonderful and meant the world to me. It’s beautifully written and speaks volumes to me. Few people in my life understand my desire and need to travel. Few people understand that one day I WILL get out there are make the fantasy in my head a reality. They either think I am naive or just don’t know what I want yet. Your post is such a blessing and I am so glad to have read it. It makes the waiting so much better :-) Plus, I started using the website Students of the World. I have found some people I really enjoy emailing. Thanks for the magnificent post and recommendation. :)
Thanks so much for reading this Sonika, and for sharing your own struggles and experiences. I know it can seem difficult to see through to when you are able to make your own decisions, but I hope you keep the dream alive — especially through the Students of the World, that looks like a really fun way to connect! If you ever need a friendly ear just send me an email and we can chat more. :)
In the end, JUST DO IT! =) great post.
Thanks Gabriel, that’s the core of it for sure — find a way and DO IT! Thanks for stopping in and reading :)
I love that you mentioned Youth for Understanding. I was an exchange student to the US with them 12 years ago and I benefit from it to this day.
Oh I am so glad you had a positive experience with them Mariella, I tried to do a lot of research into the good ones since I never did an exchange. Do you still keep in touch with your host family? :)
Great advice! Best to start early. As someone who waited until I was 50 to become a full time traveler my only regret is that I didn’t start earlier!
Great post!
Makes me (again) reflect on how grateful I am for my parents, and how I was raised.
Thanks for bringing this awareness back to the forefront of my mind!
As with you, I am grateful my dad took the time to support my dreams — I didn’t travel internationally as a kid, but he supported the dream to do so. And I thank him for that regularly :)
I sent this to all my friends and cousins who just graduated from high school this week. Thank you so much for writing this… I wish I would have had this at 18.
Aw shucks thanks for sharing, one of the things I’d love to start doing more of is talking to people of that age/stage in life — it’s so important that they know they can (and should!) go travel. :)
“The hardest task you have ahead of you is to push through the naysayers, to look beyond the rules and permissions society places upon because of your color, class, gender, or age and to realize that if you dream it—if you hold something in your heart that you want to do, then there is validity and goodness in that choice.”
This applies in all facets of life. The naysayers keeping putting you down, and most people inevitably give in and start to listen to them. The trick is having the persistence and determination to ignore them.
It is so true of the other facets Drew, I agree. I think Mark Twain encapsulated that sentiment pretty well “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” It can be hard to learn to trust your own path and instincts and keep pushing — that’s where the good stuff in life is waiting :)
I’m SO grateful that my parents trusted me to travel at a young age: a summer spent with family friends in France when I was 16, a summer studying in Paris when I was 18 really set the tone for my love of France, and eventually, travel. My mom spent her junior year of high school as a Rotary Club exchange student in the north of France and her junior year of college in Montpellier (where she hitchhiked to Spain and wandered through Paris)–and I’m so grateful that my first-generation American grandparents in a small town in Pennsylvania supported that in the 1970s, a time before jetsetting was as easy or cheap or common as it is today. They’ve created a legacy of young travel in our family–and while I’ve surely taken it beyond their wildest dreams, I’m so glad that they did.
That awareness from your parents is so rare for many — you were definitely luck Christine to have them know the value and support you so early on. Your mom sounds like a great lady too! Whenever I meet the travelers who hitchhiked and backpacked in the 60s and 70s I feel these little pangs of jealously that there were elements to the journey — the true immersion and adventure — that we don’t quite have any longer. :)
This is such an important post, Shannon. As much as I hope students go out and pursue their dreams, I think adults have a responsibility to help encourage students to do these things. For example, in the U.S., American high school students rarely study abroad, but that doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t. Also, I’d encourage adults in the U.S. to volunteer to become host parents for foreign exchange students. There is a shortage every year, and it’s an important experience for students to have.
I had no idea that there were not enough host parents in the US — that hadn’t occurred to me. I think it’s really about spreading the word that it’s something that can be done to some extent, because I know to a lot of people it wouldn’t occur to sign up to the program. But I think if I have kids and a house, it would be a great way to still have them exposed to new ideas and cultures without actually leaving — an entirely different type of reverse travel for the people hosting I think. It is chatting these past couple years with you that kept it at the top of my mind as an option, even, so it’s great that you blog and share that experience and awareness.
LOVE THIS!
Thanks so much Michelle, I realized that so few people are talking about what to do before you’re the master of your own destiny as an adult :)