Andrei Tarkovsky’s Message to the Young: “Learn to Be Alone” (2015)
Solo traveling is where I learned how to be alone. Turns out, I don&#x27;t mind hanging out with myself. Not an insane revelation, but an important one.<p>Yet when I try to convince people to solo travel, I encounter so much hemming and hawing, so much resistance. I suppose there&#x27;s a safety aspect. I&#x27;m male and can&#x27;t speak about traveling as a woman or trans-man. But I do meet many female travelers. And I don&#x27;t know significantly more guys who solo travel.<p>I&#x27;d imagine there&#x27;s a fear of loneliness, of homesickness, of paralysis in face of being so untethered. Which, yes, can happen. It comes in waves. Some days I&#x27;d be horribly, terribly lonely. Some days I&#x27;d do almost nothing. It always passed.<p>Anybody who has the time, the money, the temptation to travel alone should do it. Which is often less than people imagine. Flights have gotten incredibly cheap. Hostels are acceptable for a few weeks. Food can be bought on the street or prepared from grocery stores. Every country, every city has low income people, and they still eat.<p>The lifestyle certainly suits the young more than the old. So then why do so many of my young friends delay traveling? Why are they so resistant to the idea of slowing down their education a little to see the world? I know, I know. They need the money. But I do have friends who aren&#x27;t stuck in a hyper-competitive race to optimize their earnings by age 25. Who are fortunate to take the luxury of a break.<p>I shouldn&#x27;t care this much. Yet I can&#x27;t help but find it so odd that people require someone else to be with them while traveling. If I had to find a travel partner with the same time off, similar goals with traveling and who I wouldn&#x27;t murder after a week or two, I&#x27;d probably be stuck at home.