What Would You Do If You Had A Year For Yourself?
I’ve asked this question to 100+ people and I’m showing you the answers.
We are eating olives in Athen’s Central Market. Sunset. Music of Bouzouki.
At one point the music fades. The professor at the end of the table seizes the opportunity.
“Guys, I have a question for you”
All ears point in his direction now.
Let’s say you have a whole year without commitments. Nothing to do, nothing to plan, nothing to take care of. Money and time are not an issue. What do you do for these 12 months?
Silence. He has to point out someone to force her to answer.
“Well… I’d travel”.
“Same. Maybe a roadtrip through Russia”.
It’s my turn. I see the question has potential for a better answer, but I’m taken off guard:
“Travelling, for sure. South America. The Andes. Then down in the Amazon Forest. Yes.”
The professor is not satisfied. 12 months is a lot, he points out. You can’t travel non-stop for that time. Your body and mind need to settle. What will you do when you get tired of new places and new people?
He’s right, I think. So I come up with a more detailed answer:
“I’d travel for 3 months and then settle down somewhere in the Amazon forest. I’d like to be deep immersed in the jungle for a while. Perhaps living with an indigenous community. Learning how to recognise trees and winds and how to use plants for food and medicine. Learning their language and rituals. Then move on, come back to society with all this knowledge and find a way to show it to people”.
“Would you do this alone? Where exactly would you go? Why? What are you looking for as you travel there?”. And he keeps adding follow-up questions.
It’s revealing. Masked behind the gap year question is a deeper inquiry on what makes you really happy.
As you go on in life you always try to carve out time for activities that satisfy you. Asking yourself what you would do if you had a ton of time and resources is a good way to unveil what really makes you happy doing.
Maybe there is something you have always wanted to do. Writing. Hiking mount Fuji. Learning how to draw. Now you are forced to say it out loud.
Answering this question helps you spell out your desires. And it makes you wonder why haven’t you pursued them yet.
I liked the question so much that I started asking it to all my friends. And then acquaintances. Then I went on exchange to Norway, and I asked the gap year question to all the people I met at parties. Such a good conversation starter.
And,
I took notes of the answers!
There’s a note on my phone titled “Gap year question” with more than 100 answers.
I’m jealous of it. It’s a unique document with the dreams of tens of people. Things they might have said only to me.
Yet I think it’s worth sharing, because there is a file rouge connecting all the answers. It tells us something about our generation.
These are some of the responses. They are reported just as I took notes of them after the conversations I had,
What Would You Do If You Had A Year For Yourself?
- I would travel from central America to Patagonia. Going all around South America, I want to see both oceans. I love their music. I’d like to end up dancing on the streets of a south American city to the live sound of drums.
- I’d like to live in the desert for a month. I’m sure that after that I would know what to do with the remaining time.
- I would like to work on producing some music. It’s something I struggle to find the time for. What I could do would be to travel to different continents and produce music with local artists, to incorporate ethnic sounds and rythyms in my music.
- I would like to travel to Colombia, perhaps volunteer there. In our lives we are so obsessed with ourselves it would be nice to dedicate some time to others.
- I’d travel, to Vietnam first. Then explore South East Asia. And take some time to learn how to build my own stuff, repair clothes, build myself shelves and furniture.
- I would like to found a sustainable self-sufficient community, in a place like Iran.
- I’d travel without a destination and read, read a lot, finally.
- I will travel, then settle down somewhere quiet, read and write a book about the interviews I asked during my travels.
- I’d visit my family, and get a scuba diving licence.
- Maybe going to Paris, getting a studio and painting, and going to museums.
- I want to join an art residence in the middle of nowhere (like the Texan desert) and just play with my creativity.
- I need to visit my sisters: one in Paris, one in NY. Then I’d travel from cabin to cabin in Norway.
- I would travel, see untapped nature and then devote time to the little things that make me happy: nights with close friends, deep conversations, museums, reading, doing arts and crafts.
- I’d travel, one month in each place, and then write a book about it.
- I would love to go to India and maybe work as a nurse, talk to people there and help them.
- I’d travel through Asia, take pictures and publish a photo-book.
- I think I have an oddly specific answer. I would train for and hike the Appalachian trail and bring a disco ball and take pictures whenever it reflects the woods nicely.
- I would hire a chef to cook me meals from every part of the world every day for 365 days.
- I want to hike mount Fuji.
- I’d live in my summer house on the Swedish coast and relax there with my family.
- I’d travel to every single country.
- I’d travel first to Italy, then South Africa, Brazil, not as a tourist: I want to make some aspects of their life mine when I go back. Then buy a warehouse in Alaska and paint.
- I’d rent a jeep and drive from The Netherlands to South Africa along the Western African coast.
Notice something?
There is a recurring verb right?
I have reflected on this. Why do all these people want to travel. What are they looking for. Why haven’t they done it yet.
Why do they stand here as pulled rubber bands constraining the instinct that’d make them jump on the other side of the planet if only they had the chance?
Then I realised.
My sample is broken. I have basically only asked this question to students. Young people, full of energy. The only answer that did not entail any traveling I got it from one professor. She was quite old indeed.
There’s another thing to notice. Most of the answers mention uninhabited places. Jungles. Mountains. Deserts.
It’s not only about traveling then. More like escaping. My sample of people lives in a condition from which their instinct tells them to escape. From the noise, or the concrete, or the hassle. And I would dare to broaden this consideration to large part of my generation.
As soon as we are given the chance, we want to go somewhere far. And possibly somewhere with fewer people and more trees.
I will keep asking this question. I’ll try to aim for an older demographics this time, and see if something changes. Maybe as you grow older you quench this thirst for something else. Or you’re forced to do so. I’ll see what happens.
By the way, I encourage you to use this question as a conversation trigger. It’s also a good way to skip the small talk when meeting new people. It sets the conversation on a deeper level. Many good things come out of this.
