I am Lonely and Afraid (and so can you!)

Phil Montgomery

August 9, 2018

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I walked onto the street. All of Nikolskaya was one rolling mass of humanity drifting back and forth with the tide, slowly creeping towards Red Square. The red, white, and blue of the flags protruded starkly from the background of the grey, European tiles. One thing that strikes me about Moscow is that sometimes, on the older streets, I can’t see at first glance where the street ends and where the buildings begin. The monotone brick starts to climb without warning, surrounding me in a three sided box of old buildings, cigarette butts, and in this case, screaming, crying, hugging, kissing, drinking, and dancing Russians. As I squeezed against tens of thousands of people, the chants of RU-SSI-YA filled the air: the ecstasy of an entire nation. A nation who, in a game that was frustrating beyond belief, eye-wateringly boring, or the pinnacle of your country’s soccer success, depending on your perspective, had just beaten the dumbfounded Spanish team in penalties. To walk out onto the street in the seconds following the game and join the overflow of screaming fans was blasphemously un-American but exhilarating all the same. Yet, I stood, witnessing the simultaneous release of pure joy from thousands of people, feeling… alone.

You probably aren’t surprised to hear that a 20 year-old kid who doesn’t speak Russian or have any friends in the city felt lonely. I wasn’t either. What gnawed at me, though, was my own refusal to make friends, a decision borne from a fear of seeming awkward. I watched the game in front of a group of Colombians and spent the whole time telling myself to turn around and speak some Spanish to them. They probably would’ve had a short conversation with me then gone back to watching the game, but maybe we would’ve become friends and spent the night walking around the streets of Moscow. I’ll never know because I couldn’t summon the courage to turn around, even when I knew there weren’t any possible negative outcomes. I didn’t want to feel dumb, which, in itself, is dumb logic.

This past weekend, on Friday night, I ate Burger King after work in the central part of the city. I usually don’t leave the office until around 8:30 and I don’t get a lunch break, so to compensate, I ordered $10 worth of food in a country where that’s enough to feed someone for a week, eating it in the mall food court while reading on my phone to feign connection with someone in ‘the cloud.’ With a 7-up in hand, I walked to the metro station and waited. As the train squeaked in and the doors pshhht open, women in high heels and men in white shoes, skinny jeans, and tacky shirts--with English they probably didn’t understand on it--flooded the landing, ready to go out in the city. Only a handful of people heading back home replaced them. Back at my apartment, I watched the new Star Wars movie and played guitar.

There are three reasons to travel, each one more valuable than the last, although all of them are important. The first is to see beautiful things that push you to consider that the world is a huge, daunting, and magical place worth exploring. The second is to talk to people who are different from you and to then consider that maybe the world is actually small, simple, and understandable--that maybe we’re all pretty much the same. The third is to get to know yourself better, that through uncomfortable circumstances you can push yourself to grow and change and even start to understand who you are and who you want to be.

The first reason is relatively easy to accomplish. All you have to do is type something into google maps and go there. Some people even pay another person large sums of money to plan everything for them, and there are much worse ways to spend large sums of money. Either way, the value is in seeing the place, hearing about it, and diving into the history. You may learn something about a culture and a society, or you might see something that you find stunningly beautiful.

The second, talking to people very different from you, is substantially harder, usually made much more difficult by the fact that the people you really want to talk to usually don’t speak English. Talking to people is important for many reasons, but here are two that mean something to me. The first is that most people end up being quite similar in terms of the things they value: they like to laugh, dance, be with their families and friends, listen to music, and drink whatever alcohol their country likes. That is not to say that everyone is the same, but it is worth realizing that most people have found the same three or four things in life bring them deep and meaningful happiness. In their most pure and genuine form, none of those things involve living a comparative lifestyle, judging people, or engaging in general materialism. Second, talking to people is worthwhile in and of itself; talking to people who have lived a completely different life from you even more so. While you may find that most people value similar things, there are a lot of small but mind-blowing ideas in the world that come from having a different perspective. I’ve noticed that most Russian people and I tend to agree, but growing up in a communist country racked by war, corruption, and seven centuries worth of leaders who care significantly more about themselves than the tens of millions of people they govern is going to instill interesting opinions about power, greed, and general human folly. An unexpected idea I’ve learned in Russia is that people project a country’s leader onto the leader’s citizens, assuming that a quasi-dictator actually represents the desires of their constituents. Americans have negative perceptions of the Russian people because of how they view Putin (just as many European people have negative perceptions of Americans because of how they view Trump). What I’ve found is that most Russian people are begging for a chance to show you that they are good people. They completely reject the idea that they are, in any way, copies of the person that they are politically beholden to. That’s not to say that everyone in Russia hates Putin, but a surprising amount do. The only way to figure that out is to talk to them.

The third reason, personal growth, often feels impossible. In many ways, it’s intertwined with the second, although you have to try hard to take things one step further. There’s value in being uncomfortable, in being terrified. Travelling can act as a catalyst for that discomfort. In our day to day lives back home, most of us, especially at Stanford, live easily. We know where to get our next meal, we know how to get everywhere we need to go (or, at least, how to find out), and we know where we’re sleeping that night. If you let it, travelling will throw all of that out the window. It can print your train ticket in a language you don’t speak, it can leave you halfway up a mountain with the sun setting and minimal food and water, and it can short the power at three in the morning, when a claustrophobic Max Pienkny is coming down the elevator to let you into his apartment, trapping you both in different kinds of pitch-black dark. It can even make you wish that you had never gone travelling in the first place.

Those experiences were nerve racking and scary for a variety of reasons, but the times when I’m absolutely out of options are the times when I find a way. I get the benefit of knowing that I am a capable person and can get myself out of unpredictable and frankly, weird situations. Every skill in life comes down to practice. Travelling allows you to practice being stressed, afraid, and completely alone. In addition to whatever funny memories you make, you also learn to be tougher and to not take things too seriously. Those skills have direct applications to the most difficult situations we will experience in our lives.

To receive the full benefits of travelling, you have to make decisions in spite of fear. I love playing guitar, eating fast food, and watching Netflix, and a (really big) part of me knows I could do that every night for the next month and be happy. While I started off this message by telling you stories when I let my fear get the best of me, when I sold out and got 10 hours of sleep back at my apartment, there have been many times in Russia when I’ve been proud of myself and my adventures.

Several weekends ago, I went to Samara for a World Cup game between England and Sweden. Flights were too expensive, so I took a 16 hour train ride, waking up at 6 a.m. on Friday to buy one of the last train tickets before I went to work. At the station, I suffered through six awkward interactions before I finally was able to find the track, the train car, my room--shared among three people--and my bed. After figuring it all out, I spoke with my two roommates through google translate and watched soccer for about five hours before going to bed. When I arrived in Samara with a dead phone, the driver who was scheduled to pick me up came an hour late. He then proceeded to drive 45 minutes outside of the city down a dirt road so peppered with potholes that the car rocked back and forth like it was bouncing on a water bed. He told me not to be afraid so many times that I started to be afraid. Despite our rocky start, he cooked meals for me free of charge, called FIFA to figure out a problem with my ticket, and took me to the beach to swim in the Volga. After he drove me an hour back to the train station at the end of the trip, we shared a hug at the entrance. I thanked him for being the most gracious hostel owner I’ve ever had.

On the train ride back, I spoke to a man from Medellín and played guitar with a Russian family, communicating through patriotic folk songs about how great Siberia is. Though the family might’ve been a cult - they gave me a weird Bible and the only english words they knew were “Jesus” and “sobriety” - they were generous enough to offer me food and water. I even met some Russian heavy metal fans in a dark alley after the game. I was piddling in an alley and where once there was darkness, nine people with piercings in a healthy variety of unsavory places apparated to ask where I’m from. The conversation exceeded my initial expectations, but honestly, after a guy with face tattoos confronts you in a dark alley and doesn’t hurt you, there’s nowhere to go but up.

My profound conclusion: travel is important. If done correctly, it can be hard and scary. That’s exactly why it means something. All of those memories from the paragraph above happened in three days. When I disembarked from the train, I arrived back in the capital with a wealth of new experiences, friends, and lessons learned. I was exhausted, and I don’t think the point of this type of trip is to feel refreshed. It’s to suck the marrow out of the short time I have here, helping myself grow and change along the way. I’m enjoying Moscow because of the moments where I have been uncomfortable, not in spite of them. The more I’ve done it, the easier it has become.