Happiness and Lizard-Naming

by Colin Wright
on September 27th, 2010
Leave a Comment

Wall Lizard in Thailand

Life is full of tradeoffs, and in no situation is that more true than with travel.

I lived a pretty good life in Los Angeles, before I started traveling long-term and moving from place-to-place with frequency. I had some expectations as to the quality of the place I lived, public sanitation, and other aspects of everyday life that I considered basic standards of living.

Needless to say, the delusion that these things are ‘basic’ standards of anything was thrown out the window as soon as I moved to South America.

Simple, quiet, small aspects of my life in the United States have become the things of legend (in my memories, at least).

‘Remember drinking fountains? And full-sized candybars?’ I’ll say to myself while brushing my teeth in Buenos Aires, trying hard not to get any water from the faucet in my mouth, lest I come down with dysentery.

‘Huh, what should I name it?’ I wonder about the lizard crawling around on the wall in Ao Nang, remembering a time where a spider or mosquito in my apartment would be cause to head out to the store for an oversized can of some kind of poison to be rid of the intruder.

‘$200 a month, huh? For how many gigs? Guess I won’t be uploading those travel videos after all…’ I calculate while living in Christchurch, remembering a time when I would leave my computer on all night, downloading all kinds of frivolities and never seeing a difference on my bill.

This is, in a way, the real cost of travel. Depending on where you go, traveling for a living can actually be less expensive than staying in one place, but you do tend to lose a lot of the comforts that you’ll come to associate with stagnation. Unfortunately, many people tend to focus on these downsides without considering the upsides of travel, benefits that in my opinion far outweigh the drawbacks of being on the road and exploring the world.

For example, I can get a delicious Thai meal for under $1 US. I can live in a high-end apartment in Bangkok for less per month than I was paying for my second-rate apartment in Missouri when I was in college, and even less than that if I move elsewhere in Thailand.

I have freedom of movement: if I don’t like the weather where I’m living, I can move on the spot with little preparation necessary.

The variety of people I’m able to meet is limitless, whereas when I was living in LA, I was constrained by those who would come to LA or the immediate vicinity…a very small percentage of the world’s population. Ditto for the kinds of experiences I’m able to have; ever want to ride an elephant? Bungee jump? Dance in a legit tango hall? Spent a holiday in the southernmost city in the world? Hard to do these things in LA, but easy while traveling.

I think that’s the big difference between a comfortable lifestyle and an ever-changing, exciting one: the first is defined by the small things that we long for when they’re gone, and the second by the major, life-changing events that we’ll never miss if we don’t experience them to begin with. If I would have stayed in LA, I wouldn’t have thought ‘huh, I sure wish there were a lizard on the wall right now, mostly to eat all the mosquitoes.’ No! I wouldn’t have had the experience of staying in a Thai bungalow and everything that involves. The warm-watered beaches, the delicious food, the smiling people and festive atmosphere…it wouldn’t have even been on my mental-map, and I could have been perfectly content without knowing what it felt like.

But that’s just it…I would have been content, not happy. There’s a huge difference there, in that contentedness makes you feel like things are fine and there’s no reason to change or grow, while happiness is usually punctuated by hardship, which forces you to change and evolve and deal with the lizards so that you enjoy the overall experience.

To each their own, of course, but for me, I’ll choose the lizards every time.

Now I just have to name him…

Colin Wright

Colin Wright is a minimalist, branding expert and serial entrepreneur. While running his blog Exile Lifestyle ,his branding studio Colin Is My Name and his e-publishing business ebookling. Colin travels the world (moving to a new country every 4 months), meeting up with amazing people, giving talks (to audiences ranging from tech industry professionals to college students to Catholic school girls) and hunting down new and interesting experiences.