Pandabear had another question for me and I am glad to respond.
I was wondering to myself, “Why NOT just drop everything and back pack across Thailand—the land of many smiles?”
Well PB,
Dropping everything is very different for each person. To some it means abandoning loved ones, children, friends, and financial security and for other it means telling the landlord they can rent the room to somebody else. Everyone’s connections are different and it is easier to leave a life with no ties then to try to make a car payment every month while swimming in the lagoons of Phuket. It really depends on your personal responsibilities. Vacations and adventures are wonderful things, but only when taken responsibly. It would be horrible to come home and find that you have major financial and/or interpersonal problems that accelerated while you were gone.
Perhaps you might want to plan a trip to Thailand and see what you can do while not having other elements of your life suffer. From a holistic view of happiness, the happiness gained on the excursion can be very insignificant to the distress felt afterwards. The equation might go the other way as well, you might find that you hate backpacking across Thailand and want to come home. Dropping everything leaves very little to come home to.
However, if you can go to Thailand with little or no consequence on a whim then do it. Spontaneity brings flavor and vibrancy to life. You can learn and grow immensely from an experience like that. You don’t even need to go to Thailand for that sort of fun. What are you doing right now? What is keeping you from getting up, going outside, picking a direction, and seeing what you find twenty miles down the road? There is always an opportunity to be spontaneous. Take a weekend trip to a city where you don’t know anyone and nobody knows you. Explore a different culture there. Go to a biker bar. Eat at a roadside restaurant. Go to a crazy sporting event or random festival. Doing these things might give you the spice you were looking for without the commitment to being on another continent for a prolonged period of time.
