Traveling around the world for 6-?? months is really eye opening and gives you a lot to think about. Solving puzzles about getting money, how to get to places, crossing language barriers, trying to tap into the underground, cool scene, not being limited to the tourist kitsch, learning how things are done in ways you had never thought of, these all require creativity and are rewarding. There are also many hardships on the road too, and sometimes you wish you could teleport home, if there is such a place.
But after a while, the places all start looking the same, and every place gives you the same experiences, more or less. There are buses or subways, hotels, or hostels, interesting people who like meeting foreigners, museums, parks, points of interest, foods, drinks, restaurants, bars. Something starts growing inside you saying "I want to build something, I want to belong to something." That something could be a tech company, a school, a network of friends, a business, a non-profit, a family, or anything else.
When you get to that point, your traveling days are limited, and you start making plans for how satiate your new appetite. You will probably travel again someday, but with a new objective, and with more experience guiding where you go and how you spend your time in the places.
Sankyo - I'm sitting here almost at a loss for words. You've managed to articulate something deeply relevent in my life right now, in a way I just haven't quite able to put a finger on myself (having just moved back to the US after 3 years living/working abroad).
If you're up for it, I'd love to connect some time and talk life. I didn't find contact info in your bio, but my email is in mine. It'd be great to connect.
Depends. If you travel for the sake of travelling yes, but there are ways to make it more interesting. For example, last time I went travelling I went to South America for 6 months. I travelled slowly (I probably stayed in less than 10 places total) but had activities to focus on along the way, like learning different styles of dance. Travelling doesn't have to be about cramming in famous places, you can live it with just as much purpose as when you build something with permanent roots.
That's the true value of traveling. You learn that people are similar, nobody is completely happy with where they live, deep down there is an enormous connection between humans, and location is not what is stopping you from making your dreams come true .
Nailed it. Traveling is amazing, but it certainly loses its luster after a while. I must say we're extremely fortunate to have been able to even make it to this point though.
I've always wanted to travel longer, but I've found that after a month, I end up with the urge to learn, create or build something and to be with people that I've known for years, not days.
As a result, in the past 6 months, I've taken 3 overseas trips (4th in a few weeks), bouncing back and forth between home and overseas.
I traveled for 10 months and this is exactly the feeling I got. Thanks for putting it so well. I had a strong desire to move forward on learning and building something, which the constant uncertainty and inherent instability of traveling was unfit for. Like everything else, it's best done in moderation for people like myself who love to experience new things but also love to make new things.
In your experience, is it not possible to build something whilst on the road? I will be travelling soon and fully intend to hit the ground running with trying to grow some ideas. Perhaps you have some tips?
Absolutely rings true. I spent ~2 years being nomadic in my late 20s. Whilst I had a blast, at some point a deep mental nagging started to grow, just like you said: "I want to build something, I want to create something that impacts people beyond myself".
After some point, I guess I got tired of just being a "consumer" of experiences. Also, it starts to get pretty damn lonely. Pitching up in a new place, trying to make some friends, then moving on is a grind that started to wear me down emotionally. For other more self-socialising/individualistic people this may not ever become a problem, but it did for me.
For me it helped me realise how privileged I was just by virtue of my birthplace and (non-wealthy) parents. It directly lead to me pursuing a career in education-tech, where I can use whatever skills/upbringing I have to affect some sort of positive impact on the world. Im no philanthropist, but actively choosing positive work has certainly made me happier.
Why do we let people sell us cynicism? What benefit is it to us? Does it make you feel better for not pursuing your dream of travelling? Maybe the problem is you and not your lack of trust fund.
For about $5000 a person, my friends and I bought a car in California, shipped it to London and drove to China. I was poor at the time and put most of it on a credit card. I also kept my job-- I saved up 3.5 weeks of vacation and lobbied my boss to give me a few extra days on top to give me a full month out. It was one of the best times of my life and something I always love to reflect on.
I guess what I'm upset about is, along with this article, no matter what you say there will be people trying to convince all of us that we can't have a happy life without a trust fund. Not Madison Ave... people on these forums. 'Not everybody has $XXX', 'Not everbody is as lucky..'. Shut up. Either start pursuing your dreams or shut up. Stop bringing everybody down with you. Travelling the world is a series of small easy steps that anyone can do. It's vile to try and convince people otherwise.
In all of these articles and discussions, there's this lingering, implicit assumption that everyone dreams of "travelling the world," which is one of the vaguest and least creative dreams I can possibly imagine.
I think you're missing the point of this. To me it reads as a satire of un-selfaware privileged people and facile, feel-good travelogues. You can certainly be a traveler without being/doing either of those
As a citizen of the world, I rarely get lonely. Everywhere I go, I meet such diverse groups of people. In hostels, I’ve shared beers with friendly British and Australian twenty-somethings. In hotels, I’ve sipped wine with friendly British and Australian forty-somethings. We all became lifelong friends, despite the language barriers.
He forgot to mention the groups of Israelis who travel together in large swarms with at least one guitar player, taking over hostels before migrating to the next one!
This is pretty unfair. I basically did just what this satire describes, minus the trust fund and eye-gouging. I did it by working hard and saving my modest salary for a pretty long time, finally having saved enough to take 6 months to a year off.
People are always mystified at how I managed to do it. They think traveling the world is expensive beyond their wildest dreams. But the truth is, for much of the world the most expensive part is the plane ticket. You can live shockingly well on $10 a day in some parts of Asia, for example. It ruins you for when you return home: "Wait, a burger at a sit down restaurant costs $12?!? That's crazy!" Meanwhile you're meeting fascinating people and observing different and sometimes surprising cultures.
The time I spent traveling became the most significant and formative part of my life. What this satire portrays cynically, I experienced joyfully, and with a profound impact on my sense of place in the world, in society, and in history.
For Americans in particular, travel is one of the most important things we can do to get some perspective on the insularity and self-satisfied back-slapping that goes on at home. Suddenly you realize how homogeneous American culture can be, and, for all the praise we love to heap on ourselves, how far we have left to go to catch up to the rest of the world in so many aspects.
I spent many years traveling the world alone. If you have any questions, or if you're interested in doing it yourself, I'd be happy to give guidance.
"San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis ... They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s." American Gods - Neil Gaiman
> sent a quick text message to my girlfriend telling her that I was leaving the country forever, and was off.
A friend of mine once showed up at my house to tell me, "I'm leaving for China. If my girlfriend asks... tell her I'm at my parents'". I stared at him for a moment, then said, "Ok," and he left. They made up some time later, but he's still over there.
Hah. It is true that a lot of the people traveling are 'privileged', but probably not with 60k a month trust funds :) They are just privileged by where they were born, the value of their currency and the support they might have from family. A lot of the people I met when I did my traveling had little savings, had worked their asses off to save up for the trip and didn't have any employment lined up for when they get back. As software developers we are doubly lucky to have jobs that are portable worldwide and in demand, I did a little consulting on the way to help pay for things.
btw if you have an urge to do this do it before you have kids - after that, well, not going to happen probably.
How about with kids? With a family? With aging parents that needed help while you are the only child? With a H-1B visa on the edge of being kick out because I'm heading to the 6 yrs limit?
I felt this way because that's exactly where I'm in now and I don't seem to find a way out. Need some advice here.
As long as you have a $60,000/mo trust fund, these aren't difficult problems to solve. Just take your entire family with you when you travel! No need to renew your H-1B since your income from that job is a pittance compared to your monthly stipend anyway. And you can always hire a full-time aide to care for your parents! </s>
Seriously though, it sucks that you're going through a rough time. I don't think there's a magic bullet - you just have to keep on moving and see where life takes you. If you end up having to move back to your home country, will that really be the worst thing imaginable?
Even if your standard of living takes a hit, your family will survive and you'll be together. I've been down a similar road before, and although it seems calamitous at the time, eventually you adapt and it's just life.
I don't know that I can give you a lot of advice, since your life is bound to be so much different than mine, but I can tell you what we did.
I own a small business (14 employees, <1MM in revenue) that does essentially technology-oriented bookkeeping. I'd say we're a startup, except that we're bootstrapped and capital comes from customers, not from VCs--not sure if that excludes us or not. A couple of years ago, my wife and I decided to move with our 4 children to Sweden for a year, where she has two sisters. We wanted our children to be able to speak Swedish, not just English, and I wanted to see the world a bit more. (I actually commented on a hacker news piece while there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731296)
Things got a little crazy when we found out before we moved that she was pregnant with number 5--and that if we moved he was going to be born in Sweden. We had only 10,000$ saved up, but we decided to take the plunge knowing that I could work remotely on my business here and I had 60k income. Note that her being a dual citizen was critical--we knew she would be able to take advantage of the free health care.
It was an awesome year, with some powerful struggles--living above the Artic circle in a foreign country made me look at things in a whole new way.
The three things that made it possible were 1) We had a support group (her sisters) in Sweden willing and able to help us 2) I had a remote job and 3) she was a citizen.
We came home broke, and I lost a few customers by not being able to focus as easily, but I have no regrets. My company didn't go bankrupt, both me and my children now speak fluent Swedish, and we have an amazing circle of close friends that we would otherwise never have gotten to know.
I can't say it's easy, but the moment my wife & I decided _as a team_ to do it, I knew it was possible.
I think your best option is to be practical. You're unlikely to be so old that in 20 years you'll be too old to travel.
Having kids just means that, at worst, you have to wait until they're 18 before you run off globetrotting. In the meantime you can still see the world, but you might be limited to their holiday periods.
If you're on a H-1B then don't forget you've seen more of the world than the majority of people who don't leave their own countries, ever.
Aging parents are trickier, but this comes down to how much money you have and how important it is that you are the primary carer. It sounds cold to put it in those terms, but if it comes down to it, that's the decision you're making - 24/7 care is certainly something you can buy (and might actually be better than what you personally are be able to provide).
Many might be jealous you got selected for an H1B visa.
Moral of the story - if its bad for you, its always worse for someone else. Not something that may make you feel better, but its important to try not to lose some perspective.
> As I left town, I cast one final glance back at Greebo. One of his friends playfully tossed him to the ground and thumbed his eyes as the others snatched all the money I had given him. I couldn’t help but smile. It felt good to make a difference in the lives of these simple people.
Its possible if you have a remote job, even if you don't have a lot of money. I ditched the apartment, bought an RV and have been traveling across the US for a bit. Its cheaper than flying and hotels, and the RV cost about a year of rent where I lived, and older used RVs depreciate about 6% a year. So, overall, I'll come out ahead financially from where I was (incl travel and gas costs)
Most people probably can't do it (spouses, kids, non-remote work, drawbacks to living in an RV), but its possible on a budget and if you're in the right situation. I'm sure it'll get old soon, but so far its fun, albeit stressful. I've seen more in a few weeks than I've seen in almost my whole life.
That's probably simply because terrible satire. I read the whole thing and had to come to the comments to verify. I actually thought the author was just an asshole. That's just bad writing.
My wife and I did a six month round the world trip. No trust fund, just saved the money over several years from our jobs. We were a software engineer and teacher saving up for a house down payment -- then my wife got laid off, we had too much Sushi and beer one night, and decided to blow the down payment money on the trip.
Should we have taken that money and bought that house in Palo Alto? Financially the answer is yes. But 20 years later we are still very, very glad we took the trip. You can always make money.
I fled from USA to the third world with very little money because I was so poor I couldn't really afford to move to anywhere else I wanted to be within the USA. I continued to be poor and lived on rice and chicken for several years before starting to make decent money and was able to return to the USA. I also really enjoyed this satire and just shared it on my Facebook.. lol.
I have spent the last 7-8 years traveling regularly. The past 5 years I've been traveling more than I have been at home, especially the last 2. I am not paid an exporbitant salary, although working remote helps with travel.
My parents are financially modest. My parents did their best to help me and I'm sure I got more help than many - but after the handful of years after HS I received no help whatsoever and in fact have lent both of my parents money over the years.
There are two big secrets:
1: Make it a priority.
2: Find a job that lets you travel.
It's easier now that I work remote, but I used to travel for extended periods of time back when I worked in restaurants. For a couple years I worked summers and would take the winter off to travel.
If travel is a priority, you can make it happen, and you don't need a trust fund.
Don't quit your job and travel the world. Hint: look for "REMOTE" keyword @HN. Stay 1-2 months at one place at a time via AirBnB to get cheaper rates and use Hipmunk's chained flights to avoid returns. Did that for >1 year, best time of my life!
I'm in my 40s, I've got a kid in college and another about to go, and I'm considering doing this with my wife. We have a bit of a joke that we'll write a book titled: 5 years, 5 cities.
Its not that hard if you are living in Europe, USA or some other County with a decent economy and currency. It might take a little longer depending on the county.
For me it started easy, after backpacking for a month through Europe as European I could feel this desire to travel more. So 2013 I set my lifegoal to travel arround the world. One year later I specified it to travel for one year till end of 2018.
I googled a little and found a Worldtrip costs 10'000-30'000 Fr.- per year. So when starting my first real Job I knew how much I need to save to make my lifegoal become true. So I addapted my life standards to this income.
Fast forward, its 2016, I got a poor russian Girlfriend in Russia which I can't leave for a year. So know it means to save a little more and divide that through 2.
So the base question, can you save 200$ a month? Then do it for 5 years. Can you save 400$ a month? Then do it for 2.5 years. Can you save 1000$ month? Do it for two years, because you can easily afford a nice world trip.
Maybe its because most Swiss get raised to save money but its not that hard. Split the income as follows: 1/3 renting, 1/3 living, 1/3 saving. Put the money to save (automatically) on another account the day you get your salary. Its easier to save money you never had.
So if a worldtrip is desires, set the goal of your near future life and live with the consequences to save those 200$.
I'm really tired of writers like this who project their resentment and dissatisfaction with their own lives onto people they're jealous of. See also: every article written in the mainstream press about how annoying Burning Man is, every article trashing people for being on Ashley Madison, or last year's shit storm of hate against that couple that spends their life LARPing the Victorian Era.
The default mode of our economy and society is not at all defensible. Going to work 5 days a week to make somebody else rich is entirely, completely inhumane. Articles like this are supposed to make you feel smug about being stuck in what is, objectively, a complete nightmare of a life. And I am tired of reading this crap.
Also, as other commenters have pointed out, it's entirely possible to travel the world with savings of sub $5000 without a trust fund (or sleeping outside), but I imagine whatever terrified little baby wrote this article wouldn't be able to handle the level of trust you have to put in your fellow humans to pull it off.
[+] [-] sankyo|9 years ago|reply
But after a while, the places all start looking the same, and every place gives you the same experiences, more or less. There are buses or subways, hotels, or hostels, interesting people who like meeting foreigners, museums, parks, points of interest, foods, drinks, restaurants, bars. Something starts growing inside you saying "I want to build something, I want to belong to something." That something could be a tech company, a school, a network of friends, a business, a non-profit, a family, or anything else.
When you get to that point, your traveling days are limited, and you start making plans for how satiate your new appetite. You will probably travel again someday, but with a new objective, and with more experience guiding where you go and how you spend your time in the places.
[+] [-] AVTizzle|9 years ago|reply
If you're up for it, I'd love to connect some time and talk life. I didn't find contact info in your bio, but my email is in mine. It'd be great to connect.
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kcole16|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _kyran|9 years ago|reply
As a result, in the past 6 months, I've taken 3 overseas trips (4th in a few weeks), bouncing back and forth between home and overseas.
[+] [-] markbao|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cakez0r|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalyons|9 years ago|reply
After some point, I guess I got tired of just being a "consumer" of experiences. Also, it starts to get pretty damn lonely. Pitching up in a new place, trying to make some friends, then moving on is a grind that started to wear me down emotionally. For other more self-socialising/individualistic people this may not ever become a problem, but it did for me.
For me it helped me realise how privileged I was just by virtue of my birthplace and (non-wealthy) parents. It directly lead to me pursuing a career in education-tech, where I can use whatever skills/upbringing I have to affect some sort of positive impact on the world. Im no philanthropist, but actively choosing positive work has certainly made me happier.
[+] [-] sockgrant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuvadam|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narutouzumaki|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevecalifornia|9 years ago|reply
For about $5000 a person, my friends and I bought a car in California, shipped it to London and drove to China. I was poor at the time and put most of it on a credit card. I also kept my job-- I saved up 3.5 weeks of vacation and lobbied my boss to give me a few extra days on top to give me a full month out. It was one of the best times of my life and something I always love to reflect on.
I guess what I'm upset about is, along with this article, no matter what you say there will be people trying to convince all of us that we can't have a happy life without a trust fund. Not Madison Ave... people on these forums. 'Not everybody has $XXX', 'Not everbody is as lucky..'. Shut up. Either start pursuing your dreams or shut up. Stop bringing everybody down with you. Travelling the world is a series of small easy steps that anyone can do. It's vile to try and convince people otherwise.
[+] [-] theseatoms|9 years ago|reply
In all of these articles and discussions, there's this lingering, implicit assumption that everyone dreams of "travelling the world," which is one of the vaguest and least creative dreams I can possibly imagine.
[+] [-] jkern|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mladenkovacevic|9 years ago|reply
As a citizen of the world, I rarely get lonely. Everywhere I go, I meet such diverse groups of people. In hostels, I’ve shared beers with friendly British and Australian twenty-somethings. In hotels, I’ve sipped wine with friendly British and Australian forty-somethings. We all became lifelong friends, despite the language barriers.
[+] [-] nibs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acabal|9 years ago|reply
People are always mystified at how I managed to do it. They think traveling the world is expensive beyond their wildest dreams. But the truth is, for much of the world the most expensive part is the plane ticket. You can live shockingly well on $10 a day in some parts of Asia, for example. It ruins you for when you return home: "Wait, a burger at a sit down restaurant costs $12?!? That's crazy!" Meanwhile you're meeting fascinating people and observing different and sometimes surprising cultures.
The time I spent traveling became the most significant and formative part of my life. What this satire portrays cynically, I experienced joyfully, and with a profound impact on my sense of place in the world, in society, and in history.
For Americans in particular, travel is one of the most important things we can do to get some perspective on the insularity and self-satisfied back-slapping that goes on at home. Suddenly you realize how homogeneous American culture can be, and, for all the praise we love to heap on ourselves, how far we have left to go to catch up to the rest of the world in so many aspects.
I spent many years traveling the world alone. If you have any questions, or if you're interested in doing it yourself, I'd be happy to give guidance.
[+] [-] notlefthanded|9 years ago|reply
Other side of the coin
[+] [-] xapata|9 years ago|reply
A friend of mine once showed up at my house to tell me, "I'm leaving for China. If my girlfriend asks... tell her I'm at my parents'". I stared at him for a moment, then said, "Ok," and he left. They made up some time later, but he's still over there.
[+] [-] kafkaesq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conorh|9 years ago|reply
btw if you have an urge to do this do it before you have kids - after that, well, not going to happen probably.
[+] [-] xbeta|9 years ago|reply
I felt this way because that's exactly where I'm in now and I don't seem to find a way out. Need some advice here.
[+] [-] gervase|9 years ago|reply
Seriously though, it sucks that you're going through a rough time. I don't think there's a magic bullet - you just have to keep on moving and see where life takes you. If you end up having to move back to your home country, will that really be the worst thing imaginable?
Even if your standard of living takes a hit, your family will survive and you'll be together. I've been down a similar road before, and although it seems calamitous at the time, eventually you adapt and it's just life.
[+] [-] michaelleland|9 years ago|reply
I don't know that I can give you a lot of advice, since your life is bound to be so much different than mine, but I can tell you what we did.
I own a small business (14 employees, <1MM in revenue) that does essentially technology-oriented bookkeeping. I'd say we're a startup, except that we're bootstrapped and capital comes from customers, not from VCs--not sure if that excludes us or not. A couple of years ago, my wife and I decided to move with our 4 children to Sweden for a year, where she has two sisters. We wanted our children to be able to speak Swedish, not just English, and I wanted to see the world a bit more. (I actually commented on a hacker news piece while there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731296)
Things got a little crazy when we found out before we moved that she was pregnant with number 5--and that if we moved he was going to be born in Sweden. We had only 10,000$ saved up, but we decided to take the plunge knowing that I could work remotely on my business here and I had 60k income. Note that her being a dual citizen was critical--we knew she would be able to take advantage of the free health care.
It was an awesome year, with some powerful struggles--living above the Artic circle in a foreign country made me look at things in a whole new way.
The three things that made it possible were 1) We had a support group (her sisters) in Sweden willing and able to help us 2) I had a remote job and 3) she was a citizen.
We came home broke, and I lost a few customers by not being able to focus as easily, but I have no regrets. My company didn't go bankrupt, both me and my children now speak fluent Swedish, and we have an amazing circle of close friends that we would otherwise never have gotten to know.
I can't say it's easy, but the moment my wife & I decided _as a team_ to do it, I knew it was possible.
[+] [-] joshvm|9 years ago|reply
Having kids just means that, at worst, you have to wait until they're 18 before you run off globetrotting. In the meantime you can still see the world, but you might be limited to their holiday periods.
If you're on a H-1B then don't forget you've seen more of the world than the majority of people who don't leave their own countries, ever.
Aging parents are trickier, but this comes down to how much money you have and how important it is that you are the primary carer. It sounds cold to put it in those terms, but if it comes down to it, that's the decision you're making - 24/7 care is certainly something you can buy (and might actually be better than what you personally are be able to provide).
[+] [-] darkmouth|9 years ago|reply
Moral of the story - if its bad for you, its always worse for someone else. Not something that may make you feel better, but its important to try not to lose some perspective.
[+] [-] avip|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamache|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
You mean you have a trust fund and all? Ask your advisor then.
[+] [-] jzymbaluk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cortesoft|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joslin01|9 years ago|reply
Almost lost my shit until I read further and realized it was satire. What a great line.
[+] [-] avalexandrov|9 years ago|reply
This is hilarious!
[+] [-] gnarcoregrizz|9 years ago|reply
Most people probably can't do it (spouses, kids, non-remote work, drawbacks to living in an RV), but its possible on a budget and if you're in the right situation. I'm sure it'll get old soon, but so far its fun, albeit stressful. I've seen more in a few weeks than I've seen in almost my whole life.
[+] [-] Xcelerate|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joesmo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] botswana99|9 years ago|reply
Should we have taken that money and bought that house in Palo Alto? Financially the answer is yes. But 20 years later we are still very, very glad we took the trip. You can always make money.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|9 years ago|reply
I love that. Reminds me of all the "minimalist" ex-entrepreneurs who only have a laptop and a credit card to pay for taxis and restaurants.
[+] [-] 55555|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2012|9 years ago|reply
Good books are essentially empathy writ in text. It's easy to travel a lot and still have a shallow view of human nature.
[+] [-] joeguilmette|9 years ago|reply
My parents are financially modest. My parents did their best to help me and I'm sure I got more help than many - but after the handful of years after HS I received no help whatsoever and in fact have lent both of my parents money over the years.
There are two big secrets:
1: Make it a priority. 2: Find a job that lets you travel.
It's easier now that I work remote, but I used to travel for extended periods of time back when I worked in restaurants. For a couple years I worked summers and would take the winter off to travel.
If travel is a priority, you can make it happen, and you don't need a trust fund.
[+] [-] bitL|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjclemmy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faebi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eric001|9 years ago|reply
Brilliant.
[+] [-] beatpanda|9 years ago|reply
The default mode of our economy and society is not at all defensible. Going to work 5 days a week to make somebody else rich is entirely, completely inhumane. Articles like this are supposed to make you feel smug about being stuck in what is, objectively, a complete nightmare of a life. And I am tired of reading this crap.
Also, as other commenters have pointed out, it's entirely possible to travel the world with savings of sub $5000 without a trust fund (or sleeping outside), but I imagine whatever terrified little baby wrote this article wouldn't be able to handle the level of trust you have to put in your fellow humans to pull it off.