I don't buy this: Traveling is a solid gate to happiness, knowledge, and self-growth. Here is why...

A little context/

The Kathmandu city of Nepal is a vault of symbology, where Buddha's third eye is painted on white doors and gods riding animals are carved meticulously on walls. They are mystical pictures that suggest a wealth of meanings and deep wisdom, penetrating through timeless space.

But the truth is this, most Nepali people nowadays don't know what these symbols represent, even craftsmen are hired simply to duplicate curves on woods. When one walks to a sacred site and sees flags of mystique Buddhist texts strung across the sky, tinting primary colors onto blue patches of heaven, our vanity-driven nature (sponsored by social media) immediately thinks of this as a terrific photography spot. We forget to derive any meaningful, philosophical undertone.

Rethink/

That's how tourism has become one of the biggest industries. Committing to it is to sign a contract of abolishing authenticity. Culture and heritage sites are polished like a precious gem, locked inside the collector's drawer. Everyone with a Google search will be moved by an urge to be educated, they have to visit this precious locked gem.

Just as most people will stop at what I call "tourist education", I am no exception. An antidote to this plague is to look deeply inward and realize what kind of knowledge would speak to each individual personally. Don't forget that humans are exceptionally curious and naturally driven beings, we quickly lose touch of those ambitions only because we have used up self-trust and willpower to learn and accomplish things that we absolutely give no fuck about.

There is no blueprint for traveling like what the tourism industry wants us to believe.

If you travel to France, for example, this means you don't need to visit the Louvre Museum just because. Instead, follow that witty and innocent curiosity of yours to explore French boats until your heart explodes in happiness.

As soon as we create a detailed map of worldly knowledge that nourishes us personally, creativity and life will be rejuvenating like waterfalls during the rainy season. Our veins would beat with more vigor and goodness because as a being, we are once again aligned with our inner values. Funny how we ever let others define what information is worth consuming.

Counterpoint/

Some people would say if they were to follow what their animalistic nature wants, then they would end up learning only about celebrities and dessert shops.
This mindset is entrenched in the culture of tourist education, remember that we only get here due to the brutal exhaustion of our self-trust in the pursuit of unaligned values.

Imagine/

Imagine a kid whose mind and body are decided by his parents as an imprisoned, untrustworthy criminal. They tell him where to go and what to think about. The kid grows up not only has no ability to critical thinking but also crooked in his trust in nature's vast curiosity. Life is then a blanket of boring and forced occurrences. That kid is our love of learning if we continue to abuse him by stripping away all of his autonomy.

I don't promote the binary mindset where you have to be either/or. As humans, we have the privilege to develop self-discipline and structure. So let's have disciplines and structures but in order to learn and lean in what naturally speaks to us, not to imprison our curious inner-child. That is the way to travel.

So if celebrity culture and dessert shops speak to you, go ahead and explore!