Distance Lets You Change—Bring That Openness Home

In Paris, I ate snails and liked them. At home, I won’t try the street vendor’s unusual rice cakes.

This contradiction puzzled me until I understood: distance gives us permission to be different versions of ourselves. Away from the people who think they know our limits, we become limitless.

At home, I’m the person who orders the same dish at every restaurant, who avoids crowds, who needs familiar routines to feel safe. But put me on a train to somewhere I’ve never been, and suddenly I’m willing to sleep in hostels, eat mystery meat, navigate foreign metros at midnight.

The permission isn’t geographical—it’s psychological. When no one expects you to behave consistently with your history, you’re free to experiment with who you might become.

Happy notices this transformation. “You’re braver when we travel,” she says. It’s true. At home, I research restaurants for hours before trying them. Away, I follow strangers’ recommendations to places without menus, ordering by pointing at other people’s plates.

Maybe this is why travel can be addictive—not for the destinations, but for the temporary escape from our own limitations. Away from family patterns, social expectations, professional identities, we can try on different personalities like clothes.

The businessman who becomes a backpacker on vacation. The introvert who makes friends in hostel common rooms. The careful planner who throws away itineraries and follows spontaneous invitations.

These aren’t fake selves—they’re suppressed selves, aspects of personality that need distance from daily life to emerge.

But here’s what I’m learning: the openness that distance creates doesn’t have to stay distant. The courage to try new experiences, the willingness to talk to strangers, the flexibility to change plans—these aren’t travel skills, they’re life skills that travel helps us practice.

What if the real journey is bringing home the person you become when you’re away?