If you have been reading My Beautiful Adventures for a while, you might remember my “29 Before 29” bucket list. It was filled with bold, beautiful goals: travel to two new countries, run ten miles, read an entire novel in Spanish. Bucket lists are a beautiful way of holding ourselves accountable to adventure.
Looking back, that list captured a season of becoming. I wanted to see the world, and I wanted to see as much of it as possible.
But seasons change.
Recently, my family and I weathered a historic snowfall. The usual hum of schedules and obligations disappeared beneath a thick white blanket. For the first time in what felt like forever, life paused without asking anything from me.
In a season where my heart has been carrying more than it ever has before, that pause felt like a gift. I stood at the window watching the snow fall, and for a little while, my thoughts slowed enough to simply be.
It was in that quiet, snowy stillness that I realized something profound about the way we move through the world.
We spend so much time packing our bags, chasing the next horizon, and building itineraries. But sometimes, the most profound journey does not require a passport at all.
It simply requires the willingness to look inward. An existential travel.
What Is Existential Travel? (Stripping Away The Noise)
Existential travel does not necessarily have anything to do with a destination. It is about a mindset. It is what happens when you step so far outside of your daily routine that the familiar armor you wear simply falls away.
I remember the first time I truly felt this. It was during my travels to Tibet. I was standing in a place that felt ancient, sacred, and alive with wisdom.
I realized then that some places you just visit, but others recognize you.
China was never just a destination in my passport; it was a mirror—reflecting parts of myself I had not yet fully understood.
When we strip away our native language, our daily comforts, and our predictable routines, we are left only with ourselves. Suddenly, standing in the vastness of an unfamiliar landscape or sitting in the quiet pews of an ancient, dimly lit cathedral, we are forced to confront our most profound existential questions.
We stop asking where we are going, and finally start asking who we are becoming.
Spiritual travel
The Universal Inner Light
Back in the day, I received my Bachelor’s degree in Comparative Religious Studies. Studying the world’s diverse philosophies has shaped one of my deepest beliefs: spirituality is deeply personal, and it is something we all deserve the freedom to explore.
When you study world religions, you stop seeing borders and start seeing the invisible threads that connect us all. You realize that the human pursuit of meaning is universal. And that, as Søren Kierkegaard—a defining voice in Christian existentialism (along with later thinkers)—has said, ‘truth is subjective’. A deeply personal, lived experience.
Whether you are lighting a candle in a historic church in Europe, spinning a prayer wheel in a Himalayan monastery, or simply watching the snow fall in your own backyard, that subjective inner truth—that universal “inner light”—is exactly what we are all searching for.
Existential transcendence
Existential Travel Psychology: Why We Seek The Unfamiliar
But why do we feel the need to go so far away to find this inner stillness?
I myself think that sometimes, it takes the shock of a completely new culture or environment to wake us up from the autopilot of our daily lives.
In my other life, I spent years studying and practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine. TCM teaches you that everything is connected: body and spirit, emotion and health, seasons and energy. Healing is not just physical; it is emotional, spiritual, and energetic. We believe that health is harmony—between breath and emotion, yin and yang.
When we are stuck in our routines, or when we are navigating heavy seasons like anticipatory grief, our energy can stagnate. We lose our flow.
Existential travel disrupts that stagnation. It forces us into the present moment. When you are trying to navigate a foreign city or sitting in a space that has held monks and pilgrims long before you, you cannot dwell on the past or anxiously plan the future.
You just have to be.
Finding meaning in travel
An Existential Travel Guide For The Seeker
If you want to experience this kind of depth on your next journey, there is no need for a rigid checklist. You only need a shift in how you move through the world.
Leave The Itinerary Behind
We often think we need to maximize every hour of a trip. But sometimes, the best thing you can do is give yourself permission to stop.
Leave an afternoon completely blank. Wander without a map. Sit at a café and just watch the world happen around you without needing to participate in it. No fixing. No planning.
Sit In Sacred Spaces
You do not have to belong to a specific religion to feel the weight of a sacred space. Just walk into a cathedral, a temple, or even a quiet forest. Do not take out your camera. Just sit.
Notice the stillness of spaces that have held seekers long before you. Let the quiet settle into your bones.
Embrace The Discomfort
Looking inward is not always comfortable. It can bring up aches and questions we have been avoiding.
Once, I thought that healing had to look like progress. Like moving forward. But I have learned that sometimes, healing is just sitting with the discomfort and realizing that your heart is still capable of holding both pain and light.
What to do when feeling existential
Bringing The Stillness Home
The true test of an existential journey is not what you discover while you are away, but what you bring back with you.
As that historic snowfall has taught me, there’s no need to cross an ocean to find an existential shift. The snow did not fix anything about what I am walking through. But it gave me a reprieve—a soft, quiet space where my nervous system could rest and my heart could feel something other than heaviness.
When the sun finally came out and the storm passed, everything sparkled. It felt symbolic somehow. Not because everything was suddenly better. But because beauty still found a way to land, even here.
Whether you are standing on a mountain in Tibet or watching the snow fall in your own backyard, peace can arrive quietly. Joy can visit without warning. And even in seasons of deep grief, there are moments where the world grows still enough to let your heart breathe.
That, to me, is the most beautiful adventure of all.
What a stunning post!