So what if millions of other people have been to the Eiffel Tower before you. It’s still a unique travel experience FOR YOU especially when you see it in a new way as with these workers silhouetted at dusk.
You travel far off any known tourist map to encounter what you believe will be a unique travel experience. No one there speaks your language or appears to have ever encountered a Westerner before. You learn enough of the local language which, combined with gestures worthy of Marcel Marceau or an Academy Award, get you by.
You come home from this seemingly unique travel experience. You post stories and photos on your Facebook page. Tweet about it. Tell everyone you know about your unique travel experience.
Then one day, a friend sends you a link to someone else’s travel blog. You read about her unique travel experience. Maybe it was to the same place you visited. Or maybe someplace completely different. But the emotions she felt, the wonder she discovered, the authenticity of the culture, the change in her perspective – her very life – it all seems uncomfortably familiar.
In fact, her unique travel experience sounds just like your unique travel experience. The one you now realize may not have been so unique…
Dealing with disappointment
At one point in my life, this realization would have really bugged me. I used to feel that if my trip wasn’t a unique travel experience, then somehow, it was diminished. If I ran into other travelers, especially other Americans, then the “authenticity” of the experience took a hit. It simply wasn’t as special.
I used to also believe that if someone else didn’t say “Goodnight” after I did as I went to bed, monsters would get me in the night. You might be surprised at the effort it takes to ensure that your “Goodnight” isn’t the final word.
Thankfully, I outgrew the “Goodnight” fear around age ten. It’s taken me a bit longer with the obsession of having a unique travel experience.
But here’s what did it.
I’ve come to realize that while a completely unique travel experience may seem to be a myth, the reality is this: It doesn’t matter.
Why?
Why the idea of a unique travel experience makes no difference
- The very term “unique” implies some kind of comparison. And comparisons, at least of experiences, rarely help or add any value. What do you ever gain by comparing your trip to someone else’s?
- The fact that others have similar emotional responses to their trips that you had to yours isn’t a downer. It’s a cause for celebration. How cool is it that deep down we share a common humanity that enables us to enter into a mutual experience? If you see your unique travel experience as a form of community and not a competition, it enhances rather than detracts from the experience.
- Discovery is personal. This is one of my pet maxims about travel. You can visit some place like Angkor Wat, the Eiffel Tower or the Great Pyramid, places millions before your have seen, and guess what? It’s still a discovery for you. It is and always will be a unique travel experience because there is only one you. Others may have similar responses, but they’ll never be exactly the same.
So enjoy your unique travel experience. Or rather, don’t even think about it as such. Think about it as a meaningful experience. To you. And if others have had similar ones, great. That just gives you one more topic you can enthusiastically dive into with that couple you share a train compartment with on your next trip. Because it is likely you share so much more.
