Why I love to travel: Travel is exhilarating for me. It is like the first spring breath of fresh air upon walking out the door to the first true early morning of spring—especially after a cold, snowy winter. It is like snacking on a solid bar of dark chocolate. It’s like the exhilaration of reaching the crest of a hill or the top of a mountain, or the view around the turn of the next corner—the natural-high rush of a magnificent view.

Talk about the so-called endorphins you get from a variety of life’s experience—only travel can give you a kaleidoscopic cornucopia of exciting novel sensory experiences, all in your own neat little travel microcosm—all in your own little private new corner of your travel world or your travel life.

Travel is the ultimate natural high—natural, psychological ‘endorphin-like’ experience. If there is such a thing as wanderlust, well, then  . . . travel is the fullest, most complete expression of this wanderlust.

It’s a true “today is the first day of the rest of your (travel) life” feeling. Travel offers the specter of a condensed exhilaration combined with just about the best, most valid, realization of novelty. “It doesn’t get any better than that!”

Other than travel, no life experience I can think of comes closest to exhilaration you get of walking out the door in an exciting, novel setting that only travel can give you.

See my various articles on the psychology of travel  at  www.michaelbrein.com. Among other things, this section of my website addresses such ideas as, for instance, that travel leads to the possibility of “being all that you can be’ in a collapsed, reduced time frame.”

In particular, see my “Western Walkabout” in my section on Travel psychology / mini-essays -the Western Walkabout.

This article addresses the idea that travel enables personal growth, maturing, becoming more of an adult. In the endless cycle to fulfill the most basic of human needs (food, shelter, etc.) to achieving higher order ones (achievement, accomplishment, appreciation of knowledge and art, etc.), travel gives you the collapsed microcosm of events, shrunken in space and time, whereby consequences are relatively more visible and quick, with more immediate rewards and mild setbacks (or punishments) kinds of consequences.

That is, the consequences of our actions are more immediate. Thus, personal growth, self-esteem, confidence, etc., are more visible and within one’s reach.

 Everything is collapsed in space/time with consequences being more immediate . . .