Last week the kids and I were talking about travel planning.
Not in a big, philosophical way. Just one of those casual family conversations that starts with logistics and ends somewhere deeper than you expect.
My kids have trained through Europe in 2024 while living in Rome.
They know what it’s like to land in a city and immediately orient themselves. Routes on their phones. Tickets in their wallets. Seats reserved before they even step on the platform. A blue dot telling them exactly where they are and where they’re going next.
So when I started describing my Europe, at roughly the same age, they looked at me like I was describing another century.
I told them about my semester in Prague and the way I planned trips then. A paper map of Europe on my wall. Routes marked with marker and dots. A thick book of train routes and times that I had to study before I ever left my room
If I wanted to go from Prague to Paris, I couldn’t just search and buy. I had to look up the route in the book, write it down, and go to the station to buy the ticket. Sometimes that meant buying one leg of the journey first, then purchasing the next ticket at a transfer station because I was switching train companies. Sometimes the company I needed didn’t even service Prague, so there was no way to buy that ticket until I physically arrived at the connecting city.
Occasionally, getting from one place to another meant standing at multiple ticket windows, stitching together one trip with two or three different companies.
And when I arrived?
There was no Uber. No taxi app. No Google Maps.
I explained how I’d step off the train and figure it out from there. Talk to taxi drivers directly or go to a window to buy a bus or metro ticket. Or pull out a folded paper city map and walk, counting blocks, checking street signs, turning the map sideways until it finally made sense.
Eventually, I’d find my hostel, check in, and be assigned a room with anywhere from three to fifteen other people. Bunk beds. Shared bathrooms. Strangers from everywhere. Backpacks stacked in corners.
They listened, half amused, half amazed.
To them, travel has always been supported. To me, it was something you actively navigated.
And then, almost as an afterthought, it hit me.
I didn’t just travel like that because technology was different.
I traveled like that because my parents let me.
They put me on a plane to Europe three months after 9/11. Alone. No text messaging. No unlimited data. No smartphones. No location sharing. No way to quietly check in on where I was or what I was doing for six months.
When they sent me off, they weren’t tracking a dot on a screen.
They were trusting the person they had raised.
I don’t think I fully understood that courage then. I do now.
Because listening to my kids talk about how easy travel feels today, I realized something important: every generation thinks their independence is normal. But independence is always built on someone else’s bravery first.
And in my case, it started with two parents standing at an airport, letting go, and believing I’d find my way.