What Did You Bring Back?

“What did you bring back?” “What did you shop for?”

These are some of the first questions people ask when someone returns from a trip to another country. And we all know this means things that can be unpacked from a suitcase :)

But what about everything else we bring back? 

I was thinking about this after returning from a trip back home, spending time with family.
I revisited some familiar places and visited some new places, enjoyed familiar food, and picked up conversations with old friends as though no time had passed. 

When I planned this trip, there was no particular outcome I was working towards other than spending quality time with family. There was no checklist to complete and nothing to achieve. Even though I didn't plan for any "specific thing to bring back", the experience gave me quite a lot. And none of it could have fit into a suitcase! 

I went down memory lane and gained some new perspectives on familiar things. I was reminded of what has changed and what hasn't, and I got time to pause and reflect. I realised where I came from and at the same time, I became acutely aware of how much I have changed. 

This travel experience made me think about how often we measure the value of an experience by its output: what we create, complete, achieve, learn or bring back. But perhaps we sometimes overlook what happens along the way.

Sometimes, the most meaningful product of an experience isn't what we produce. It's what the experience produces in us.

Not every process needs to produce a tangible product. Sometimes, the process itself is the product. I carry with me the conversations, the things I noticed, the things people shared, and the thoughts I am still mulling over. 

And there is learning in that too. Learning that is not always planned, structured or easily measured, but learning that happened simply because I engaged with an experience and allowed it to shape me. 

We often look for evidence of learning in something tangible. We talk about a completed course, acquiring a qualification, some new skills, or something we can demonstrate or produce. But learning can also be much less visible. It can change how we think, what we value, how we understand others and ourselves, and how we approach situations in the future. 

I think some of our most profound learning happens outside any formal structures. Learning happens through experiences, conversations, relationships, unfamiliar situations and moments of reflection. Perhaps we need to pay more attention to these less visible outcomes of learning.

I think that's something worth pondering, not just in our personal lives, but in how we think about experiences and learning more broadly, within communities and organizations. And it is so important that we recognize all of these forms of learning, both for ourselves and for others. Because sometimes, what matters most is not what we bring back from an experience; it is what we carry forward.

A picture of a mural located in the Lodhi Art District
captured by the Author on her recent visit to New Delhi, India

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This post connects to something I explored in an earlier post, When Producing the Thing Is No Longer Proof of Competence, where I questioned our tendency to equate the output with the value of the process. In the August post, I reflected on why producing an artefact isn't necessarily proof of intelligence or competence and how the real value lies in the thinking, judgment and decisions behind it. In this post, I guess I am extending that idea beyond work and learning into life itself. What matters isn't always what we produce or bring back, but what happens along the way, often in ways that no tangible product could capture!