Sam Gentle.com

Tourism

A once-in-a-lifetime experience for only 25 cents!

Once, when I was younger, I decided to never stay at a party for more than 3 hours. The rationale was that, after that point, you've extracted the optimum value from the party and your time could be better spent elsewhere. I tried it for a little while, but the reality turned out to be pretty unsatisfying. Although I was right that the main experience was usually tapped out at about 3 hours, in many ways that was the least interesting part. The best experiences ended up happening late at night, when whoever was left had run out of party chat and unexpected stuff started happening.

We seem to be awash in a kind of experience economy, with lots of ways to dip your toe into one experience or another. You can extract value from that experience without having to seriously commit to it or make any sacrifices. Voluntourism is an easy target, but only because it so profoundly embodies this spirit of safe and controlled discomfort. Regular tourism itself is also an example, of course, but these days it tends to be rightly recognised as a fun experience more than a challenging one.

The problem with this controlled discomfort is that it comes with a built-in escape hatch. Let's say you've always wanted to live in Japan. So one option is that you stay in Japan for a while and see if you like it. Turns out you don't know the language, you don't have any friends and everything works differently. After a little while you realise that it's too much for you and you leave. Game over. Another option is that you actually move to Japan. Later, it starts to seem too hard and you want to back out. But it's too late; you've moved your whole life over here already. You just have to learn how to make it work.

I wrote before that having control over your situation limits you to the kind of life you can imagine. Similarly, being a tourist limits you to the kind of experiences you don't walk away from. When you start something audacious, like moving to a different country, starting a company, or switching careers, you don't actually know if you can do it. That's what makes it audacious. When you turn out to be insufficient for the task, you have to find a way to become sufficient. Or, if you left an escape hatch, you jump out and it all goes away.

So all of these escape hatch experiences, maybe going to live in Japan for a while, learning a bit of Spanish or something, working on a startup idea and seeing how it goes – I don't think they are worth much. Discomfort that you can turn on and off easily is no real discomfort at all. Like a few hours at a party, you're only ever going to get exactly what you expected. The real experience comes after you commit fully and all the tourists have gone home.