There’s something a little surreal about watching your kids pack suitcases for a continent you’ve not been to for more than 30 years. This summer, both of mine are doing exactly that. Beth-Rose, our seventeen-year-old, is heading to Germany after graduation. Zachary, who’s twenty, is going to Spain with his partner Hailey. Different trips, different countries, different reasons. But the same underlying truth: they’re getting out into the world before life starts assigning them roles. And it’s what I would say to every young person; travel in your twenties before jumping fully into your life.
Beth-Rose’s German Adventure
Beth-Rose’s trip starts in the most Beth-Rose way possible. Before she ever boards a plane to Europe, she’s heading to Niagara Falls for a big dance convention. Anyone who knows her knows that dancing isn’t just something she does, it’s how she moves through the world. So a convention first, then a flight straight from there to Germany.
She’ll be in Germany for almost a month, connecting with her bestie Jana and visiting several of our former international students and their families. We’ve had many students from Germany live with us over the years, and those relationships have stuck. Now those families are about to meet the version of Beth-Rose who isn’t filtered through a webcam at our kitchen table. She’ll travel around the country, partly by car, partly by train, staying with families she’s mostly only met over Zoom, even though the former students themselves already feel like siblings.
When I think about that month for her, I keep coming back to a quiet little thought: she’s going to come home a little different. Not in a dramatic way. Just in the way you can only get from waking up in someone else’s country, eating someone else’s breakfast, and realizing the world is bigger and friendlier and weirder than the version you grew up inside.
Zachary and Spain
Zachary’s trip is shorter, just eight or nine days, but it’s been brewing for a long time. Spain has been on his radar for years. He’s made online connections with video game developers and music composers based there, and at some point that started shifting from “interesting” to “this might be where I want to live someday.” That’s not a small thing for a twenty-year-old to know about himself.
He’s going with Hailey, his partner. A short trip, sure, but it’s the first taste. The point isn’t to see everything. The point is to walk down a street he’s only seen in photos, to hear Spanish spoken in a Spanish café, to figure out whether the version of Spain he’s been carrying around in his head matches the real thing. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Either answer is useful.
I think about how rare it is to actually go test your own dreams while they’re still forming. Most of us bury those dreams under jobs and bills and “maybe later.” Zachary is going to look his maybe straight in the eye when he’s twenty. Whatever he finds there, he gets to carry forward.
I Didn’t Do This When I Was Young
And as for me, I didn’t really travel I was young. A few road trips. The usual family vacations. Nothing remotely like what either of my kids is about to do.
What I did do, at twenty-three, was move across the country to start over. That move ended up being the seed for everything that came after, including a career path that has zigzagged in ways my kids still tease me about. We’ll be sitting at the table and one of them will say something like, “Wait. You were a teacher? You never told us that.” And I’ll have to explain, again, that yes, I was, for a stretch, and also a few other things I haven’t quite gotten around to mentioning yet.
I did finally make it to Europe, but not until I was thirty. Ten days road tripping through England and Scotland, with a side trip over to Belfast to visit my buddy Mike. It was wonderful. It was also late. I remember thinking, somewhere on a winding road in the Scottish Highlands, that I wished I’d done this a decade earlier, when the experience could have actually shaped some of my choices instead of just decorating them.
Heather’s Story
Heather’s story is the better example, honestly. She spent a year as an international student in France when she was young, and that year did exactly what travel at that age can do. It planted something. She didn’t come home with her whole career mapped out, but she did come home wanting more French. More of the language, more of the culture, more of whatever it was that had hooked her over there. Years later, when she decided to become a teacher, the choice wasn’t just to teach. It was to teach in French. That year abroad was still doing its quiet work in the background. That’s the kind of slow shaping you don’t usually get sitting in a classroom at home, weighing pros and cons on a notepad. You get it by living somewhere long enough that the language and the culture start living inside you.
If I’d traveled more before that move at twenty-three, would I have figured things out faster? Probably not. No one’s ever accused me of being a quick learner… But I might have figured them out with more confidence. I might have known sooner that the world is bigger than my hometown, and that “starting over” isn’t actually a scary thing, it’s just a thing.
That’s part of why we cheer them on so loudly. We want them to skip the years I spent assuming the path was a straight line, and to get an early version of what Heather got: a real, lived sense of who they are when they’re somewhere new.
Why Travel In Your Twenties Is Ideal
Here’s a question I’d ask any young person reading this, and I’d ask it gently: what’s the rush?
Coming out of high school and immediately diving into a career, or signing up for four or five years of university before you’ve really had a chance to live anywhere or do anything, can feel like the responsible choice. And sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s just the default, the thing you do because nobody around you suggested anything else.
The thing is, you can’t actually know what you want to study, or what kind of work you want to do, or what kind of life you want to build, until you’ve seen a few different versions of “life.” A month in Germany, or a week in Spain, or a year of bouncing around with a backpack and a part-time job, those experiences don’t just give you stories to tell. They give you data. Real, honest, “this is what it feels like to be me in a place that isn’t home” data. This is what travel in your twenties opens up.
You might find a passion you didn’t know you had. Or you might fall in love with a city, or a craft, or a way of cooking eggs. You might also confirm that what you wanted was right where you started. All of those outcomes are good ones, because they’re earned.
The Quiet Permission Slip
If you’re a parent reading this and you’ve got a kid talking about a gap year, or a summer abroad, or even just a big road trip, here’s what I’d say: lean in. Be the person who says, “Yes, go.” Be the one who helps them figure out the logistics instead of listing all the reasons it could go wrong.
The reasons it could go wrong are real. The reasons it could go right are bigger.
And if you’re the young person in this scenario, here’s your quiet permission slip from a frazzled dad on the internet. Go. Take the trip. Save the money, work the extra shifts, sleep on the couch, eat the cheap food. Meet the families. Get on the train. Walk the unfamiliar street. Whatever shape your trip takes, take it.
You’ve got plenty of years ahead to settle into something. You’ve got a much smaller window to wander.
Watching Them Go
In a few weeks, I’ll be standing somewhere with one or both of them, helping with a suitcase that’s almost certainly over the weight limit, going through the mental checklist parents go through. Passport. Boarding pass. Charger. Enough warm layers for a German evening or a cool Spanish morning. The hug at the gate. The wave I’ll try not to make too long.
And then Heather and I will come home, the house will be quieter, and I’ll think about how lucky we are that this is the version of summer they’re getting. Not the summer where they grind through a job they don’t care about because they think they have to. The summer where they go.
Beth-Rose, dancing her way through the German countryside with Jana. Zachary, sitting in a Spanish café with Hailey, listening to a language he’s been studying in his head for years.
That’s the picture I’ll be carrying around with me. And honestly, it makes me want to start packing too.
