Travelling is not a competition (no matter what internet may say)

If you are keen on travelling, you surely know a website called couchsurfing.org to help you find a place to stay when you are on the road, especially for a solo trip. By using this website, you have the possibility to get hosted by locals for free (and generally for a few days only). You can also host people yourself, and meet travelers from all over the world to share stories, discussions and experiences. 

Your profile should be filled up properly to ensure you get answers, and you can put the list of all the countries you have been visiting so far.

How many countries did you go to? How do you feel when landing on a profile where the guy visited the whole world while you barely hit ten countries? How comfortable do you feel when talking to someone that travels the world while you do not have the opportunity to do the same? 

Forget about that, travelling is not competing with somebody!

Quality over quantity: the number of countries you went to is not essential. What prevails is what you effectively did in those countries, the people you met, the culture you discovered, the adventures you had, the introspection you were able to make, the relatives you missed, the questions you asked yourself or the recollections you created. It does not matter to hit fifty countries if you glanced through them and were only interested in the pictures you would take to then put them on the social networks.

Travelling is close to a way of living. It is mainly about humility, because it is acknowledging that we can live in a way that is different from what we know. Things can be done differently, and work out still. Truth is plural, and we do not know everything because we read some stuff in a book or an encyclopedia.While the contemporary society is compelling us to buy things, get things and consume things all the time with no interruption, to then compare us and be satisfied or disappointed depending on who we take a look at, we should take a break with that consumption era to appreciate a simple moment for what it is. Simplicity is not preventing you from being happy.

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