Before starting this post, I want to make a disclaimer. I love traveling, I think it is one of the best, if not the best way of broadening your horizons. It’s always important to see and explore new places, even in your own country, that’s how you learn and discover new things and expand your mindset. There’s even a special term, that I’ve been using to describe myself for years – wanderlust, which means a strong desire to travel.

Recently, after the covid restrictions were fully lifted, to be more precise, people have started traveling much more often, which is really great. There are now lots of cheap tickets, hostels and airbnbs, that allow pretty much everyone to visit other countries or do some domestic traveling. In Armenia traveling wasn’t too common years ago. People may go on a beach vacation once a year or two, and that would be all. But this new trend reached my country as well. In a way, it’s good that people spend their money more reasonably – on seeing the world, instead of doing some other stupid stuff, like throwing luxurious weddings, that cost half a fortune or buying yet another new iphone, even though the previous one is still working well. But since people never know how to keep anything in balance, the love for traveling (sorry in advance for overusing this word in this post) has become a new addiction.

The more it goes, the more I notice people who are obsessed with traveling. It is their only goal, purpose and dream of life, they only think or talk about traveling, they earn money only to visit other places. And it kinda started to remind me of an unhealthy addiction. I’ve heard and seen people saying that any time they’re feeling depressed or being in a bad mood, they book tickets and hotel reservations and it really calms them down. So basically, traveling has become a sort of an escapism, which, again, isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it’s necessary to escape your normal life, routine and surroundings every now and then, in order to gain new energy, relax and recharge. But when anything crosses the line, that’s when it becomes problematic. When this type of people for some reason don’t visit a new place for, God forbid, a couple of months, it becomes a true tragedy for them. I’ve seen people complaining about not traveling for a while in such a dramatic way, that you’d think it’s the most important and complicated problem in this world.

You know, it reminds me of people, who hate their jobs, and live from weekend to weekend. They somehow manage to survive for 5 days, and try to compensate it within 48 hours. And let’s face it, even if they have the most amazing, fun and eventful weekend, it won’t make their other five days good. They’d be still wasting their lives, because they’re basically living two days a week. Now imagine the same situation but in a bigger scale. Many people who work as crazy for months, in order to save money and visit yet another country (or sometimes even the same city, as many do). It’d be completely okay, if they didn’t hate their life in their own country and enjoyed it as well, had a couple of fun hobby, that would entertain them, and then went on a new adventure. But sadly these people don’t spend their times learning something new, solving their problems, which they try to avoid via traveling, or having fun. They work almost 24/7, run like a hamster in a wheel, just to earn more money.

I think the reason for this interesting phenomenon is that people are extremely unsatisfied with their lives. For various reasons they don’t change the jobs that they hate, they don’t find fun hobbies, don’t do what their hearts desire the most. So, in order to make up for a “failed” life, they travel as a reward for enduring the difficulties they have to face. Another reason might be that people are trying to run from themselves, and traveling is the best way to do so, because you simply won’t have time to think about and analyze your problems.

And, of course, once something becomes trendy, everyone wants to keep up with anything that is considered cool. If you asked people what’s their biggest dream years ago, only 1 out of 10 would mention traveling. Now, all of a sudden, traveling has become everyone’s number one dream. They visit the same cliche places, museums and cafes, whether they like it or not, just because you can’t go to Paris and say that you haven’t seen the Eiffel tower, everyone will think that you’re either crazy or a looser. And no one wants to be either of those.

To end these pointless wonderings, I want to once again point out, that I don’t have anything against traveling or active travelers. I do however think that everything, even the most beneficial and great things, can become bad and destructive, if they become an obsession.