What if….?
It is a question that most young professionals ponder on a weekly and even daily basis.
It is a question that far too often individuals will let sit on their conscience as it slowly manifests itself into a metaphorical ball and chain of excuses for not going out and experiencing the world as it was meant to be.
I remember sitting at my desk a month ago contemplating the next team building exercise I could implement with my associates or a new action item I could generate to boost the efficiencies of my work area. I had hit a wall and I was tired of the monotony and the daily routine in the professional realm. I was in need of a new arena to express myself, to make my ideas and dreams a reality, to experience destinations and cultures through immersion rather than a tv screen or computer monitor.
So instead of asking myself “What If” I started asking myself “Why Not”.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
When I travel, I don’t just want to see a glacier. I want to climb it.
I don’t just want to make out a volcano from a distance. I want to feel its heat as I scale it.
I don’t just want to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. I want to fall asleep under them.
So I decided to take the plunge and go to Alaska with Under30Experiences and create a journey outside of mass tourism.
Mass tourism has turned travel into a glorified sightseeing tour. One that caters toward feeding knowledge to you through an ear piece and a tour guide rather than putting you into a situation where you can experience a culture and be the source of your own information.
Through Under30Experiences you know that Machu Picchu is 7,970 ft. above sea level. At its summit you were short of breath not just from the picturesque landscape, but also from drawing thin air into your lungs while standing over a mile high into earth’s atmosphere. You know that Alyeska, Alaska receives, on average, 860 inches of snowfall a year because you fell face first into the 3 ft. of fresh powder that fell the night before. You know that Nicaragua is home to some of the most beautiful beaches on earth because it was in its waters where you learned to surf. You know that Costa Rica’s rainforest has five layers to it because you saw each one below you as you zip lined across its treetops.
U30X brings new meaning to the phrase “been there, done that” because after you have experienced even one of these trips you can truthfully speak those words where as many travelers accomplished the first part but fell short on the second. I firmly believe that every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them.
U30X quite literally is a vessel to accomplish the latter. It brings together young adults likeminded in their adventurousness, but diverse in many other aspects and turns their dreams, ideas, and willingness to live life to the fullest into a reality. It has redefined forever the way young professionals will travel by fostering the idea that experience lies in action. It comes from doing instead of seeing. My life and the lives of the individuals on these trips will not stand in monotony, they will not be grayed out by the daily grind of a 9-5 job, and our worth years from now will not be measured monetarily but instead will be found in the experiences and memories of a life well lived.
Under30Experiences provides the opportunity for every individual who seeks to have an effect on the world rather than stand affected by it who aspires to do instead of see who longs to live instead of exist.
