I grew up in a village that was scared of the world. So, as it often happens, I grew up to be someone who craves it.
No second language at our table. No passport stamps in the house (or even travel passports). Just neighbors telling ghost stories about “out there” like it was going to eat me. You know the trope, the kid who runs toward the one thing their family spent years fearing. I used to think that was a Disney cartoon plot, until I turned into that main character, with a very predictable but no less wholesome story.
And you know what the outside world they warned me about actually was? Just another village. And then another. And another. Seventeen of them, so far :)
It’s not all cute travel content, and I want to say that plainly before anything else. I’ve cried in airports with no one to call. I’ve stared at “home address” on a form and left it blank because I genuinely didn’t know what to put there, or just filled in the latest one, or whichever wouldn’t cause too many questions. I’ve missed people who remember me as someone who doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s a specific kind of lonely in that, being missed as a version of yourself you had to leave behind on purpose.
Fear doesn’t stop at the border. Every single place has its own version of it, its own version of the thing that could eat you if you let it. I used to think I was looking for the one place that would finally feel complete. But I’m so happy I realized instead that the whole world is my home, and if I can’t seem to feel comfortable in one corner of it, I shouldn’t feel guilty about changing my address.
But the version of this that works isn’t the one where you pass through a place and photograph it. It’s the one where you engage actual human beings, not businesses, not services, people. What’s been working for me is volunteering wherever I land. Dog rescue shifts at a shelter in Kuala Lumpur, helping small local businesses, staying with families instead of hotels, that’s the way to actually live a global life. The last five places, I stopped following internet guides and sightseeing altogether. That’s a whole other topic, tourist porn deserves its own post. I made a video about it too, I’ll link it here before this goes live.
And somewhere in doing that enough times, you stop finding the place and start finding yourself. There’s no “them.” Just us, everywhere, being human at each other.
People call this elitist. A privilege. A white tourist profiting off neocolonialism. You know what I’m actually doing right now? Working for a Vietnamese NGO, on a Vietnamese salary. My first trip anywhere happened on twenty dollars. I have a restrictive passport. I come from an underprivileged background, and I’m still climbing out of generational poverty, with my whole family still in it.
Living this is not a privilege; it’s an act of courage. It means putting yourself somewhere you don’t understand yet. Being stupid in public, on purpose, over and over, because that’s the entry fee. Nobody hands you belonging. You pay for it in being confused for a while. But I didn’t belong in my village either, so I chose a potential belonging somewhere else instead.
Everyone says you can’t run from your problems by moving. I think that’s only half true. You can’t escape yourself; that part’s real. But I have solved actual, specific problems by moving my environment on purpose. My health, by moving. My education, by moving. My loneliness and my lack of quality social capital, by moving. Real financial problems, by moving. My mental health, by moving. All of it. Your environment is doing about ninety percent of the work on who you become, and almost nobody talks about that, because it’s a much harder thing to sell you than a supplement or an app. It’s easier to sell you a fix than to tell you the truth, which is that the place around you is the fix.
It’s the cues around you that you keep reinforcing subconsciously, and they don’t let go easily. Moving breaks the autopilot. It resets the programming, and if you do it with enough self-awareness, it can become the pivot toward your happy self.
Every new place changes you a little, and identity isn't fixed the way people back home assume it is. You're allowed to leave an old version of yourself in the last village, or the last country, or the last version of your life, and sometimes that means letting go of people who only ever wanted the version of you that already left. That one costs something real, and I'll tell the whole story another time. For now, it's part of the price of actually living this way instead of just visiting.
the seven things, if you want them without the story:
Fear doesn’t stop at the border, so stop waiting for the one place that will finally feel safe.
Engage human to human, not human to business. Volunteer, stay with families, skip the guide.
There’s no “them.” Just us, everywhere, being human at each other.
This isn’t privilege. It’s courage, and you pay for it in being confused for a while.
Your environment is doing about ninety percent of the work on who you become.
Moving breaks the autopilot on cues you didn’t choose in the first place.
Every place changes you. You're allowed to leave an old version of yourself in the last one.
My village was scared of the world. I’m not anymore.
Now I spend my life helping other people get there too, because somewhere, right now, someone’s about to talk themselves out of the one thing that could be their whole world.
If you want help figuring out what that thing is for you, that’s what a call with me is actually for.
Rooting for you so hard,
Daria 🤍🌏
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