The Willam Blake Fallacy (aka the Non Traveler's Fallacy)

"There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

- Hamlet


*Small disclaimer: writing this in not the best of conditions: tummy is unhappy with something I've consumed over the day, I'm sweating profusely, am writing from hands-down the dingiest "internet cafe" I have encountered so far, and mosquitos are eating me alive. Thus, quality of writing a bit crude. Please polish and embellish in your minds.

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The fallacy is that you could possibly conceive what there is out there based on your imagination, or even less fanciful, what you already know. The fallacy is that your education is a completed set of all there is that is worthwhile to know. The fallacy is that the world is pretty much a recombination of all the experiences you have already had. That you do not need to see it to know it. That hearing about it, reading about it, seeing your friend's picutres about it, going to "world" restaurants, and watching documentaries about it give you enough of an idea that you can just live it out in your head. This is one of the greatest self-delusions and disservices you could imposed upon yourself. Sorry Willam Blake, but you cannot see the world in a grain of sand. You can only see it by actually seeing it.

The Non Traveler's fallacy lulls you month after month, year after year, into putting off diving into the rest of the world. It says to you "It would probably be more or less like my vacation in Florida". It compares a potential first trip to a developing national to a down-payment on a car, as if they were even on the same spectrum of value. It makes you believe that five or ten years later, or maybe after retirement would be a better time for it, that you will be somehow better situated to go galavanting off on adventures then.

The Non Traveler's fallacy propagates itself by keeping you a non traveler.

You cannot put off traveling. Doing so when you have the interest to go is willfully staying smaller than you could be. These are truly the unknown unknowns. You can only find out how little you know until you encounter the steady daily barrage of things and ideas you've never even thought of thinking about.

There is a hump to summit before being able to commit to traveling. Do whatever it takes to make you feel safe enough to take off for as long as you possibly can. For some, this may be telling yourself that you can go back to your old life a the end of your trip (it won't be true, of course, your old life will no longer be what it was to you, but reassuring yourself will help get you out the door). For others it will be planning the minute details of the trip down to daily activities. Again, this will undoubedly get scrapped withing the first few days of your trip, but again, whatever gets you out of worrying about it, and full on into doing it.

Once you are out, you will see how inane your old reasons were for waiting so long before you left. The more you see, the more you will want to see. And the more of yourself you meet in your travels, the more inconceivable it becomes that you could squeeze yourself back into the mold of your old life and your old identity. You will never be the same again. Instead, you will grow into a fuller version of yourself, one that you have hazily envisioned and aspire to, but are not quite sure of exactly what it might look or feel like.

Find whatever way you are able to do it, and you will not be disappointed. You will grow by bounds and leaps every day, until you reach a steady state of expansion, only to realize that what was the cruising speed accelerates to an even higher speed with each new place you see.
And you will not be able to imagine just how much bigger you have become in such a short time.

Time of course, takes on a whole different meaning when it is measured in new thoughts and experiences. Truly, as per Seneca: Life is long if you know how to use it.

Do not allow the Non Traveler's Fallacy to trick you into thinking that a trip in two years would be equivalent to a trip in two months. The changes you go through in just a few weeks of traveling are often enough to bring you to see what is truly important. If given the choice, would you go through a moment more of a less than satisfactory life, just because you could endure the motions for a bit longer?

Choose Travel. And maybe afterwards that grain of sand will reveal itself a little bit more.