Comfort blankets

We all need comforts in our lives…

…they’re formed from habits we create to make our lives easier and happier. Whether it’s taking the same route to work each morning, using the same pan to boil an egg, ordering the same thing from the same restaurant you go to, or just wearing that particular hat when it’s cold outside — we all have habits to create a sense of familiarity and to feel more comfortable, and that’s not at all a bad thing in life!

But when in history has habit or comfort led to anything that meaningful or memorable in our lives? Over time, our comforts become habits, which become routines.

Routines…

…are super useful, but they really do stop us from being creative and free and tend to put a stop on our basic instinct to explore, try new things and learn. Routines lead to yet more habits and comforts as our lives become ever more one directional (not the boy band!), and before you know it, you are literally doing the exact same thing every week, going round and round on a habit, comfort and routine spiral, and you just forget about those dreams or ideas you once hoped to achieve and explore.

For as long as we’ve known each other, our dream has been to travel as much as we can. Not the kind of travel that takes you to the supermarket to buy a carrot, the kind where you rack up some mileage and explore. Since 2008 and our first trip together to Luxor, we’ve have been lucky enough to visit over 20 countries together and getting to spend time immersed in so many different cultures! We both knew early on that we want to travel and explore as much as possible — we didn’t want to be stuck in resorts, away from the locals whose country we were visiting, stuck with tasteless international buffets on rotation, swimming in chemical filled pools, cornered by soulless evening entertainment and essentially prisoned whilst paying for the luxury. Instead we’ve enjoyed a walk from Genoa to Florence where we learnt we do not like anchovies, travelled across India by train where we learnt how to sleep on busy trains, and travelled the length of Vietnam where we learnt to eat…anything and everything!

Read the full Blog at confusionofcultures.com.