I Thought the World Was Getting Worse
I thought I understood the world without experiencing it.
I could spend months inside my house and barely change.
But somehow, a few days somewhere unfamiliar could change how I saw myself for years.
And the strange thing is, it usually wasn’t the extraordinary part of the trip that changed me.
I went to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.
But some of the experiences I remember most were just talking to French people and random tourists.
Looking back, the experiences that changed me most often seemed completely ordinary while they were happening.
I’m gaming almost everyday, I play with my friends and we’re having a good time together…
I never want this moment to end, I also talk about how school sucks and how I just want to stay inside and enjoy my life…
I start racking up thousands of hours as a teenager on many games, I’m so happy when I'm just at home doing my own things…
…
When I graduated primary school, I’m working as a gaming YouTuber and live the same life, playing games as a living is the life.
I can work online so I never have to leave the house…
I’m making videos, then consuming content about the world.
Wow, my country really is going to hell…
That country I will never visit…
The news is covering all this crime, thank god I can stay inside forever…
…
I go outside to pick up some stuff and buy food in my home town…
Oh my god that guy can barely drive…
Okay, somebody is yelling at someone there…
Did that person look me up and down?
Yeah, let me just stay at home…
The world is clearly chaotic.
…
The less I experienced the world, the more certain I became that I understood it.
My father tells me that we should visit South Africa…
He’s been there so many times, he talks about the food, the people and the weather…
I tell him,
Okay, I’ve worked for a few years. I can take a couple weeks off.
And so I don’t think much of it, it’s a few months from now.
…
I’m consuming all the news about South Africa…
The crime…
The barbed wires around houses…
The guns…
I’m thinking to myself,
Oh no, I shouldn’t go. I’m going to get robbed and die.
I’m shaking as I watch more of the content and their politics…
Oh my god is that what the politicians think of certain people?
Isn’t that country the most racist?
Okay, it has the most wealth inequality…
I’m landing at the airport in Cape Town…
As we get our luggage, I see security guards with assault rifles…
My god, this may be my last trip ever. Especially to this country.
There are people with guns… at the airport.
…
We pick up our car and drive to the hotel,
Look at the table mountain!
My father says,
And I think to myself,
Wow… yeah look at the tabletop mountain!
The clouds are flowing over the mountain!
Yeah, that’s the table cloth, they call it.
…
As we arrive at our place, we go out and I see a homeless guy, half naked walking around…
Do you see him?
Yes Alex, there’s homeless people everywhere.
I’m a bit bothered but okay…
As we drive around South Africa I see the most beautiful nature I have ever experienced in my life…
A rainbow bending over the desert, while thunderstorms rage to the left of it…
I think I’m in heaven,
I’m talking to people and smiling my heart out, here they seem so genuine…
They are constantly smiling and asking about me and my father…
I remember talking more in a few days there than months at home.
…
But as we continue to drive…
I also see places called townships, where people are poorer and live very dense to each other.
When we’re pulling up to traffic lights, people are selling goods.
They show them to all the cars until the green light turns on…
One time we paid for some fruits and as we drive off, he grabs our car and scream
Please give me money, more money!
As he falls down…
And we were in a town where even children were asking for money…
I still saw inequality.
Some of what I’d seen online was real.
But so was everything I hadn’t seen.
The internet hadn't necessarily lied to me. It had given me information without the experience required to put that information into context.
…
But despite that as the vacation was coming to an end I didn’t want to leave South Africa…
When I left, I wish I had stayed…
I’m celebrating my sister’s 18th birthday party by spending it in Paris…
She is so happy, and we’re going to the Louvre and to see the Eiffel tower…
But it was freezing as hell, I’m going up the tower and trying to cover myself up because the wind is blasting me…
But it was still nice I guess…
Eiffel Tower.
Louvre.
Famous city.
Yet what stayed with me?
The people, I remember talking to people from Spain…
I practiced Spanish as good as possible with them, and they enjoyed it.
We met up to tour the Eiffel tower together… But yet, I liked talking to them just as much as being up at the Eiffel tower.
At home, I start talking to people more… giving compliments…
I thought people here in Sweden didn’t talk a lot… But when I genuinely talked to them like I did in South Africa, something changed.
They opened up more, they smiled…
This guy at my pizzeria always smiles and I ask him about his life every time I go there…
…
I always went to the gym, even when I was always playing games and stuff.
But this time, I talk more to the people there…
I apparently start becoming known at the gym…
A business owner somehow knew about my business as started asking me for help.
And I am the one to smile first to people, which sometimes leads to conversations.
…
I thought Sweden was quiet and lonely.
But when I came home and started behaving differently, people started responding differently.
The place hadn’t changed. I had changed how I entered it.
…
Every time I gave myself more experiences, I gave myself more opportunities to discover that something I believed wasn't completely true.
I think I hate people.
So I avoid people.
Because I avoid people, I don’t have experiences that contradict the belief.
So I continue believing I hate people.
And I started wondering how many other things in my life worked the same way.
If I thought I was shy, I avoided talking.
If I avoided talking, I never got better at it.
Every awkward conversation became more evidence that I was shy.
My experiences shaped my beliefs. But my beliefs were also choosing my experiences.
I had spent so much time interpreting life that I’d stopped giving life a chance to contradict my interpretations.
Maybe that’s why some weeks of my life changed me more than entire years.
It wasn’t because those weeks were longer.
There was simply more life inside them.
…
But I don’t think the answer is to book a flight to South Africa.
I don’t think you need to chase extraordinary experiences at all.
The times when I traveled to experience the biggest things in my life…
The things that impacted me the most were often the ordinary small incidents…
I used to think changing my life would require something extraordinary.
But when I look back at the periods where I changed the most, I mostly find ordinary things.
Conversations.
Mistakes.
People I barely knew.
Places I went.
Things that didn’t seem important enough to remember.
And maybe that’s why I couldn’t understand what they were doing to me at the time.
Maybe the experiences changing who you are don’t feel important yet because you haven’t lived long enough to understand what they changed.
For years, I thought I needed to sit alone and think harder until I understood myself.
But sometimes I didn’t need to think more about my life.
I needed more life to think about.