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Can I tell you something that completely caught me off guard last weekend?

Now you've got my attention. What happened?

I was waiting for my flight. You know how airports are perfect for people watching.

Oh, absolutely. You can sit there for 10 minutes and invent a whole life story for every person who walks past.

Exactly. I was just killing time. My flight was delayed, so I wasn't doing anything special. Then I started noticing something.

What was it?

Almost everyone around me seemed to be traveling alone. Not one or two people, dozens.

Really?

Yeah. There was a young woman completely lost in her novel. A guy quietly eating breakfast. An older man smiling at a paper map like he had all the time in the world. Nobody looked bored. Nobody looked uncomfortable. If anything, they looked surprisingly at peace.

That's interesting because I think if we'd seen exactly the same scene 10 years ago, we would have interpreted it very differently.

That's what I was thinking. Back then, traveling alone almost sounded like plan B, like nobody else could come, right? People would have whispered, "Oh, that's a little..."

Exactly. Now, someone says, "I'm spending 2 weeks in Japan by myself." And people don't feel sorry for them. They say, "Seriously, that sounds amazing."

Or, "I wish I had the confidence to do that."

Yes. Somewhere along the way, traveling alone stopped looking lonely and started looking brave. That's a huge shift when you think about it. The trip didn't really change. People did.

And that's the part I couldn't stop thinking about. What actually changed? Did we suddenly become better at being alone? Or is something much bigger happening beneath the surface?

You know what? I don't think this is only a travel story.

Neither do I. The more I looked into it, the more solo travel started to feel like a symbol of something much bigger.

Freedom, confidence, independence, maybe even discovering who you are when nobody expects you to be anyone.

You know, when you buy a blue car and suddenly every car on the road looks blue.

Oh, yes. Once you notice something, it suddenly seems to be everywhere.

Exactly. So, I asked myself, am I only noticing solo travelers because that airport made me think about them?

That's actually a fair question. So, what did you find?

I started paying attention over the next few weeks, not on purpose, just naturally. And I kept seeing the same thing: people checking into hotels alone, walking through museums alone, joining city tours alone, even hiking alone.

I've noticed something similar online. It feels like every travel creator has a video called "My First Solo Trip."

Exactly. At first, I thought social media was just making it look trendy, which it probably does, at least a little.

Sure. But then I looked at reports from travel companies and they all pointed in the same direction. More people are choosing to travel by themselves than they were 10 years ago.

So this isn't just an internet trend. It's happening in real life, too.

Right. And that's what surprised me because nothing about travel has changed dramatically. Planes still fly. Hotels still exist. Tourist attractions are still the same, but the person buying the ticket has changed.

Exactly. Years ago, people often asked, "Who's going with you?" Now they ask, "When are you leaving?"

That's such a subtle difference, but it says a lot.

It really does. Traveling alone has quietly gone from being unusual to being completely normal. And once something becomes normal, people stop asking whether it's strange and start asking whether it's worth trying.

I like that because I think that's where we are now. People aren't only curious about the destination anymore. They're curious about the experience itself.

Which brings us to the next question. If more people are choosing to go alone, what finally convinced them to stop waiting? And I have a feeling that's where the biggest mindset shift begins.

Can I tell you what I think has changed the most?