[gruseom]

I agree with your first paragraph. We're really not very different from one another, but a craving for identity causes us to seek or invent distinguishing features, which have a way of turning into traps. The pattern seems to be that one spends adolescence and early adulthood acquiring this "wardrobe", then later the task becomes to shed it. That is not easy, because by when you get to shedding-time you've lost the ability to distinguish between your wardrobe and yourself.

It's counterintuitive and devilish, but the most enticing material for identity-building seems to be one's suffering. It took me many years to learn about that, and boy was that process slow.

[mrtron]

Is this why travel is so important? It forces you to have a barebones "wardrobe" and it helps you down the identity-building path?

[gruseom]

In my view, that can go either way. Sometimes we expect a change in external scenery to change us and, after the novelty wears off, find ourselves in the same state as before. Emerson said that travel narrows the mind; I suspect he was talking about something like that.

[mrtron]

I have always thought travel is more than a change of external scenery. Travel forces you outside of your comfort zone, away from people/places/things that are known.

[vellum]

It depends where you go. Travel makes you pay attention to your surroundings. It also forces you to let go of certain things, and concentrate on a whole new set of issues, like "how to get from point A to point B", or "where am I going next."

[runT1ME]

fascinating. Are there studies done on this, or is this a well known developmental phenomenon?

[gruseom]

Empirical studies? I run across the occasional one that seems tangentially relevant, but haven't kept a list. I feel somewhat skeptical about the possibility of studying that level of experience in a formal experimental way. What I'm saying comes from personal experience, discussion with others, and assorted reading.