Alter-Nomad: Relationships on the Road

Loneliness is often presented by digital nomads as their biggest pain point. Picture this. You can go everywhere and anywhere. Your stays are short-lived so you do not create meaningful relationships. You genuinely love someone but it’s impossible to picture something on the long-term, so you miss a beautiful story. Your friends/family/lovers are far-away and tied to their jobs. You are excited about your journeys, about sharing your trials and tribulations, but few can relate to it. You come back to your hometown and witness nothing has changed. There is something of Plato’s Cave to the life of a digital nomad. Becoming location-independent is accessing a new realm with new problematics the majority of the population did not experience. This new world outside appears superior to the cave you previously lived in, so you become eager to share your vision with the prisoners remaining in the cave. Your material possessions are few and your social status is mysterious: your situation will appear precarious to others and no one will be willing to undertake a similar journey. Probably worst, they will hate you for it. C.S. Lewis famously said, “the price of freedom is loneliness, to be happy is to be tied”.

I am probably too much of an introvert to care, I barely need to talk to anyone. Extroverts might have a harder time in such conditions. Still, I can’t help but think digital nomads are exaggerating their loneliness. As Bukowski would say, we all are alone with everybody. Loneliness is not the illness of the nomad. It’s a societal construct. Sedentaries are lonely too, so many are waiting for the weekend to forget it. We just didn’t learn to create social aggregation. Digital nomads should stop complaining about their lack of relationships and start building meaningful connections by traveling more sustainably. The more people you travel with, the less meaningful the relationships you develop. Humans are quick to join like-minded people and travel in a pack, without much compassion or real curiosity for the locals or for foreign cultures. This tribe effect is toxic. It prevents social flexibility because the tribe comes first, not the others. Don’t be afraid to travel alone. Traveling alone is never lonely. Travel is full of encounters when we leave our cameras and phones aside to take the time to appreciate it, to favor human contact. Unlike historical nomads, a digital nomad does not belong to one specific tribe, but many. Yet nothing stops you from slowing down your travel pace to feel more included. Float like a butterfly.

A bit of loneliness is fine. Traveling is learning to be comfortable with your inner voice, to become independent, to stop being needy and reveal your grit. Learn to love loneliness, but learn to connect with others as well. Compassion is a muscle that can be trained. You can travel alone far from your own country and still connect with people whenever you feel like it. The culture might be different, but all humans have the same basic needs for friendship, love, and happiness. We all know people who can’t get things done by themselves. I find this dependence on external motivation to be tragic. It doesn’t mean you should be a loner. It means you have to learn to be self-reliant to enjoy community life to its fullest. This year I decided to spend the end of the year in South-East Asia. The first thing I noticed is that Christmas is celebrated out of sheer western influence. There is no particular reason why people do it, except maybe for advertisement and social pressure. Santa sells more than it gives. I was far away from family and friends. It is not that I don’t love them. It was about training the mind. Everyone fears loneliness. I included. Yet I believe loneliness to be a part of life you need to face head-on. I am lucky to have loving parents and an incredible brother. I am grateful for my family and my friends. But I can’t take anyone for granted. This experience of loneliness is part of a conditioning process. It is not an attempt at escapism, but rather a jump into a cold reality that strengthens the mind and heightens the senses. When the worst will happen, I will be a little more prepared, you can never fully be prepared. I choose to be alone this year. I won’t do it willingly again. It is a catharsis to re-learn that those holiday celebrations are all about cherishing your loved ones. I am stronger today thanks to my travels.

More importantly, learn to be independent but do not isolate yourself more than necessary. Agnès Varda died a few days ago. Her movie “Vagabond” proposes a great lesson to digital nomads: we are not designed to reject community life. I downloaded Tinder during my last trip for research purpose. It struck me how easy it is to socialize nowadays. You can go to meetups or networking events instead of partying and doing stupid things. They offer free food and drinks. As a maker, changing environments is incredibly productive. I joined online communities. My interactions are not limited to social networks, but it helps to connect with others in real life.

I’m a big introvert, but I can switch on my inner extrovert from time to time. I end up drained the next day and it takes some alone time to refill the energy. Still, it expands my comfort zone. Sometimes those relationships are short-lived. For a long time, I believed you can’t make meaningful connections when you travel, but once again, my parents showed me otherwise. All it takes is for us to overcome the invisible social barriers built in our minds. Travel teaches you socializing is a skill. Loneliness is actionable. You can learn to create meaning from the simplest conversations. When you are authentic and genuinely curious about someone, you end up asking the right questions that will lead to more meaningful relationships. This wandering is not offered by the tourist industry. It is the kind of travel that is not profitable because it requires time and hazard. It implies to “enter the simple life of simple people” (Jean Chesneaux).

A beautiful journey is never lonely, and there are many opportunities to include a family circle. A common misconception is that digital nomadism is incompatible with family life. Digital nomadism is unequal to access, but it doesn’t mean it is not inclusive. It is not easy, yet not impossible. No matter your situation, many online articles already treated the topic and people who are no smarter than you already did it. There is no need to be rich, young, or single to become a digital nomad. It is a matter of choices and priorities. Adults have remote work, students have remote programs. You can travel at a slower pace. Personal finance is not an issue. Digital nomadism is not even a constraint, it’s an opportunity to switch the social power to spend more time with your children or with older adults.

One question I commonly get is how I manage to communicate with people. I am fortunate to understand English, Castilian, and French. You can get by anywhere with a few words of English. Without forcibly being fluent, most people in the service industry know just enough international words to help you, and most young people in big cities speak English. I try to learn the national language of the countries I visit, but I don’t find many opportunities to practice. I enjoy using body language to get myself out of tedious communication situations: it’s always funny to see how people react to you trying to oddly mimic simple concepts such as eating or booking a place for a few persons. Words and languages are mysterious and fascinating. Exchanging about our linguistic differences is a sure method to learn about a foreign culture and bond at a deeper level.