No Small Wander

The last time I took a train to the airport, I had an instant oh, no moment.

I was sitting on the moving train, getting to East Croydon, when an announcement came over the speakers. The train was turning from an express to a stop-at-every-station train.

As I was already running a little late, and I’ve never missed a flight before. I couldn’t access CityMapper—the signal on the train sucked! Even without the connection, I was between stops—figuring out when we were going to arrive versus whether I was still on the right train, or if I should switch, would have to happen in the 30 seconds the train doors were open.

When the doors opened, I made a last-minute decision: I got off the train and beelined for another one, two platforms over. It came within minutes, and took me directly to Gatwick. When I got the signal back on my phone, I realized that the train I was on could have taken over an hour.

This is a story of me being incredibly lucky. And although I often ruminate on what ifs (What if I hadn’t changed trains? What if I’d had my headphones in during the announcement? What if I’d missed my flight?) this one actually prompted a different thought.

I like to think of myself as a smart traveller, but sometimes being smart has nothing to do with it. Knowledge helps, because it informs instinct. But sometimes you just get lucky.

“Trust your gut” advice is tricky for overthinkers. It’s right up there with “doubt means don’t”, which I heard on an Oprah episode when I was a kid and it stuck in my brain. If you doubt something, you don’t do it/buy it/date it/eat it. But when you question everything, doubt is part of your life—so what does that mean for most of the choices you face? That you never do anything?

People mean well when they tell you to “trust your gut”. In this case, it worked out for me: I got out of a bad situation (the wrong train) into a better one (a fast-tracked train) to hit my goal (getting to the airport). But I was able to do that because I A) Knew the route very well, B) Knew that when the train changed stop numbers but not destination, that spelled trouble for me, and C) Knew that there were alternate routes available getting off where I did (if I’d gotten off at a later, smaller station, it would have meant a world of trouble).

So what’s the moral here—that sometimes we just get lucky? Well, yes. But I also thought about how 5 or 10 years ago, I would have not had any of that knowledge. I wouldn’t have known to move into action. I wouldn’t have had gut instincts to follow.

If you’re new to travel—or even if you’re not, but you’re travelling somewhere new—I hope that you take the phrase “trust your gut” with a grain of salt. We all deserve to trust our own instincts; but those instincts need to be honed and educated. It’s one thing to trust yourself when it comes to people or places to make you uncomfortable. But don’t blame yourself if “trust your gut” is useless advice. Travelling is challenging; you live, you learn, you grow, you do better next time. Don’t worry if you don’t have “gut feelings” yet—it doesn’t mean you should trust yourself less. It just means that you’ve got a little further to go when it comes to developing your travel senses!