This summer, a reader I had never met wrote about Nomadic Spirit on Instagram. Peter T. called me a kindred spirit. Reading the newsletter, he wrote, sent him back over his own trips to ask why he had taken them.
I've heard the term kindred spirit numerous times, but I still looked it up. A kindred spirit is a person whose interests, values, or outlook are so close to your own that you feel an immediate connection. "Kindred" originally meant your blood relatives, your kin. Today, the phrase describes someone who feels like family even though you aren't related.
Most of us want to belong to something. We find it at work, in a congregation, in the neighborhood where we raised our kids. Jeep owners leave rubber ducks on each other's cars and line them up on the dashboard for other Jeep drivers to see.
Across the room
I think I can spot Nomadic Spirits when I travel. They are savoring their meals and conversation, and the phone stays in a pocket. A late train or a waiter who forgets the order doesn't rattle them. They are in no hurry to check a site off a list and move on to the next "must-see."
When I catch someone's eye, I smile, and more often than not they smile back.
What ties us together
We have a lot in common, no matter where in the world we are or where we are from. The tie is curiosity about other places, other cultures, and the people who live there. We want to learn and connect. When it happens, it's the best part of the trip.
Nomadic Spirit readers are already a community. Most of us haven't met yet.
Whether we're taking more time to travel or have stepped back from the work world, our numbers are increasing. By 2030, one in six people in the world will be 60 or older, about 1.4 billion, according to the World Health Organization.
People like us
Today, Nomadic Spirit has more than 35,000 readers worldwide, with more signing up each day. When new readers join, we ask what they most want from Nomadic Spirit. Many have chosen the same answer: "experiences and insights from people like me."
That phrase is familiar to me. Years ago, I wrote a book, Highly Recommended, published by McGraw Hill, about why people recommend things and whose advice they follow. Over and over, people trusted the advice of someone like themselves. Edelman, a global public relations firm that surveys trust worldwide every year, has found that people rate "a person like yourself" about as credible as a technical or academic expert. When we asked our own readers who they trust most when deciding what to do in a place, friends who have been there came first.
The inbox
Thirty or forty emails come in to Nomadic Spirit on a typical day, and we read every one. Many of you describe yourselves as part of something, a small movement of people committed to traveling with more meaning and intention.
In late July, we asked readers what they would want from a Nomadic Spirit community. Nine in ten of those who answered wanted something from it. Most of all, they wanted to hear from other readers who had already been.
We are building that community now. It opens soon, and we will share more in the coming weeks. In the meantime, look for and smile at the kindred spirits you see on your travels. I bet they smile back.
