Do you approach life as a tourist or a traveler?
There are two ways we can approach life: as a tourist or as a traveler. Understanding the difference and making a conscious choice between them is critical. Because this makes all the difference in our life's happiness.
A few years into my career, I was helping a large technology company sell joint ventures in other parts of the world. This frequently entailed long hauls to Asia.
On my first visit to Japan, I was completely on my own. I had received basic instructions on catching the train at Narita airport in Tokyo, which train stop was mine and how to catch a taxi to my hotel. It seemed easy enough. Yet after an 11-hour flight with no sleep, even the best laid plans can unravel pretty quickly.
On arrival I decided not to exchange for local currency, figuring it would be cheaper to do so later when I was in the city. I would later find out that the places that would exchange currency had closed for the evening. I also didn't realize that my train stop in Shinjuku is literally the busiest train station in the world. Not easy to navigate for a local much less a first timer. So instead of getting out at the entrance that was closest to where I needed to go, I exited the station on the exact opposite side.
One miscalculation quickly cascaded into another.
Hailing a taxi failed as they wouldn’t accept American credit cards. I spent two hours walking around a section of Tokyo that reminded me of Times Square on steroids, complete with sensory overload. Miraculously, I eventually found my way to the hotel, sleep deprived and in desperate need of a shower.
This experience taught me an important lesson.
In that moment, I was a tourist searching for familiarity in a place that was utterly foreign to me. Yet this made me yearn to become a traveler, someone who seeks experiences outside of what they know.
This question of being a tourist or a traveler helps define how we create value and whether or not we have a lasting impact.
Looking at life through the eyes of your inner child
My wife and I have had the good fortune of being able to travel with our two young sons. It was always important for us to give them exposure to people and cultures very different from what they have grown up with in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Visiting places like Europe, Australia and Indonesia has given them experiences that feed their curiosity. The never-ending barrage of “20 questions” we get from our sons whenever we go somewhere new is a constant reminder of how they viewed the world. They were looking at people and experiences completely foreign to them with eyes wide open. Their minds were open books in the process of being written.
Just prior to COVID, we were lucky enough to travel across China. My wife's family is of Chinese descent and this was her first time seeing her ancestral home. Being born and raised in the U.S., she is a product of 1980’s America just like me. She had never been to China and our kids, who had been taking lessons for only a few months, spoke as much Mandarin as she did. However, we were both very excited to explore eight cities comprising so much history and relevance to nearly every culture on this planet.
Being a mixed race couple, with mixed kids, we stood out. Given the looks and whispers, it would’ve been easy to feel uncomfortable and out of place. Instead, we embraced the adventure and interacted with as many people as possible. We ate the local cuisine everywhere we went. We negotiated at the markets. We got crammed into the subways. In many cities like Shanghai, they actually have “people pushers” who are employed to maximize the capacity on subway trains.
We noticed how quickly the suspicious looks transformed to inquisitive smiles. In fact, our kids loved the attention which only ensured they got more of it. Everywhere we went, people seemed genuinely interested and welcoming. This was encouraging. Instead of closing ourselves off and staying on the beaten path with other western tourists, we opened up and took in everything we could. Without exception, we found the locals to be extremely friendly and hospitable. They were clearly as proud to showcase their culture and customs as we were to learn them.
As we get older and accumulate life experience, we can often develop strong preferences for the things we like and the things we don’t. We tend to align with people that share our beliefs and worldview while avoiding those who have different ones. It’s easy to become jaded by the inequities and unfairness of the world. It can sometimes be hard not to look at people as inherently self-serving and solely motivated by some combination of self-preservation and greed. Unfortunately, this can close us off to outside influences. We may resist things we do not understand or cannot control.
Which brings us to the distinction between a traveler and a tourist.
A traveler looks at the world through the eyes of their inner child filled with curiosity and wonderment. A traveler is constantly asking questions and hungry to learn more. They look to immerse themselves in things that are new. They approach the world with curiosity and not predisposition, which expands their capacity to grow. Ultimately, they are explorers who find pleasure stepping outside of their comfort zone.
By comparison, a tourist looks to recreate the comforts of home wherever they go. They are much less likely to try and understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. A tourist enjoys the vacation but is also anxious to get back to their routine. A tourist approaches travel with a fixed mindset and doesn’t take pleasure in exploring different cuisines, languages and perspectives. A tourist wants the selfie without the self-exploration.
The exponential value of “we”
During one of my early trips to Japan, I was working with a prospective acquirer of a business my company was looking to sell. After a full day of meetings, they offered to take me to dinner at one of the best sushi restaurants in the world. There was no chance I was refusing. After a four hour meal, including sushi I had never even heard of and an extreme amount of saké, they walked me several blocks to a taxi stand and sent me on my way.
As they walked off and the taxi was leaving, I became filled with dread. I had left my laptop in the restaurant and had no idea how to get back to it. Of course, my computer had sensitive deal information and this was before there was any Cloud to backup to. In a heavily inebriated state, I had enough awareness to know that this was a CLM…Career Limiting Move. After a forty-five minute taxi ride through the heart of Tokyo, I arrived at my hotel. The porter recognized me and asked me to wait for a moment. He proceeded to go into the back room and walked out with my laptop bag.
I was dumbfounded.
The number of things that had to go right to make this happen was truly incredible. First, the restaurant had to find my laptop immediately with a business card in the bag. They then had to call someone back in the US, off-hours, who knew who I was and where I was staying. Finally, they had to route my laptop bag back to the hotel before my taxi arrived. There may be few places in the world where things could have happened the way they did that night. But because of that, my village expanded exponentially. I fell in love with Japanese culture and couldn’t wait to explore more of it.
I immediately transitioned from tourist to traveler.
From that moment forward, I have always made a point, wherever I go, of eating with locals and shopping in the local markets even when I am the only foreigner and don’t speak the language. It can be uncomfortable at first but I have always found this to be one of the best ways to ingratiate myself with strangers. Because of this, I have seldom felt like a source of amusement or annoyance even when it’s obvious that I am totally out of my element.
To establish any meaningful bond with those different from ourselves, we have to look for the “we” and focus less on the “me” or “I”. This has exponential benefit in that it inevitably creates common ground and shared understanding that would otherwise have never been possible. Sometimes all it takes is a willingness to break bread with a stranger to form a life-long friendship and expand two very different worlds.
Community is formed by the process and not the outcome
Another critical distinction between a tourist and traveler is one tends to see themself as a beneficiary while the other acts more like a benefactor. A tourist looks at what they can gain in their travels whereas a traveler is more apt to look at what they can offer. The former seeks status, social affirmation and novelty while the latter seeks knowledge, deeper understanding and community.
A traveler is more fulfilled by the journey and a tourist is more fulfilled by what the journey helps them achieve.
A traveler is always looking to expand their horizons and test their assumptions. They seek out differences as being essential to challenging their accepted beliefs or practices. No matter the outcome, they realize that growth comes from the process. Fundamentally, they are producers looking outward to build something new or improved by leveraging the benefits of community.
Tourists are consumers. They look to reap the benefits of what has already been produced. The process of building a community outside their own is not essential to the outcomes they are looking to achieve. They look inward toward self-gratification and see producers as a means to an end.
Tourists are more tribal. Travelers are more communal.
Building anything to last starts with building bridges
I often think of my transition from tourist to traveler and how it has shaped my life, my relationships and my world view. This epiphany of who I was and who I wanted to become is much more meaningful nearly twenty years later.
We live in a world full of contrast and contradiction. As the things we watch, wear, eat and do are increasingly supported by a global marketplace, there is a strong pull to become more insular and xenophobic. We don’t want our freedoms restricted but we’re less willing to explore. We want to solve big problems but we’re often not willing to venture outside of our comfort zone to do it.
We can choose to live in our bubbles and fear the change that is happening all around us or we can embrace that change and build things of substance. Doing so requires the imagination and curiosity of our inner child. It demands an ability to see our differences as force multipliers and an awareness that true community is formed by a shared journey not a shared accomplishment.
So as you make your way through your own life, take a moment to ask yourself one very important question.
Are you a tourist…or a traveler?