Driving down the Panamerican highway one day, we passed a refugee family. The woman looked up and our eyes met.
For a moment the world seemed to slow down.
In her eyes I saw so much—her struggle, her strength, and her fierce love for her children. I am certain she has no social media at all, but her influence on me will remain forever.
It made me wonder what “influence” really means.
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Before social media, making friends while traveling required a tiny address book, a hopeful promise to stay in touch, and a good memory.
Today it requires a username, hashtag, icon, or QR code.
Traveling in the age of social media can be very interesting.
In our previous long-term travels, our social lives didn’t involve any media at all. We were “social” in Hostel common rooms, cafes and on public buses. When we would meet someone, whose energy matched ours, we pulled out our tiny address book, wrote down names and email addresses and made promises to keep in touch. Sometimes we did and became pen pals over the internet, but mostly we would forget to make a note of who they were and how we had met them and eventually the names would be crossed out of the book—with a pen.
Then about the mid-2000s Facebook appeared. Suddenly we exchanged FB information and no longer carried an address book. We only needed a notebook to write down usernames so when we were lucky enough to find a cybercafé, or the jackpot of a hostel with Wi-Fi we could send multiple friend requests down the information superhighway.
This was a game changer; we could peek into people’s personal lives and they into ours. There was also an added bonus of Instant Messenger, where we could talk to one another in real time—in theory. Traveling through many time zones meant that your message could be received in the middle of the night, and you would wait hours for a response. After two years of travel and accepting every friend request from anyone we met, however briefly, my Facebook feed had more foreign language posts than English.
Today everything has changed. It seems social media is not as much about connection as it is attention. As it turns out, traveling the Panamerican highway is not as novel an idea as we had first thought. We love this because it means we are meeting like-minded travelers everywhere we go, and almost without exception—including ourselves—they have their social media information posted on their rigs. For the most part, this has been a way for us to keep up on the progress of the friends we have made along the way, some we even meet up again from time to time. This is the connection aspect, but there is a darker side—the attention.
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In-flu-ence: noun
The capacity to have an effect on the character, or behavior of someone or something.
As opposed to the modern contranym of
In-flu-enc-er: noun
A person who has become well known through social media and is able to promote a product or service by recommending or using it online.
* * *
That one little “r” and a whole lot of ego can make all the difference.
We have met people along the way who have just a couple hundred followers but have such amazing energy that they are a joy to be in the presence of. Contrary, we have been in campgrounds where people have exited their vehicle with the opener, “Hello, we’re influencers. You probably know of us.” We don’t and we’re fine with that.
Some make their living and pay for their travel by being social media influencers: a young man crossing the Americas with a mule and a dog, a woman in a van who spends more time editing footage than watching the sunset outside her door,
a couple in a Volkswagen combi producing drone footage worthy of a Hollywood film.
We influence and are influenced by everyone we meet. Most are influenced to be brave, to follow their dreams, or to live life more fully. Others (though they have been few) are influenced to judge outsiders.
We have been told by some that they have been inspired by our travels. A man from Costa Rica actually renovated his old camper and now travels mostly full time with his ten-year-old daughter who has Down Syndrome. I am incredibly grateful that our lives have somehow influenced this man and his sweet girl.
Once in a small town called Bolombolo we were parked overnight alongside the town square. The next morning, we were doing some yoga stretches and Tai chi in the park when we were approached by a man and his young son. We stopped our exercises to greet him, but he encouraged us to continue saying, “The people in this town need to see this, it will be a motivation for them.”
Young people often get on the bus and are in awe, vowing, as they leave, that they too will travel. They often ask how old we are and then comment on the fact that their own parents and grandparents would never be so brave.
I will never know for certain if we influenced anyone with our measly 500+ Instagram followers, but I know without a doubt, that we have inspired many.
I have been influenced as well by people we have met and some we will never meet.
A young man we met in Panama at a place where overlanders camp while waiting to ship vehicles to Colombia was a great influence on me. Slavik, as he introduced himself, was from Ukraine and around the age of our youngest child. The minute he walked into the campground I had to fight the urge to get up and hug him because strangely something inside me felt drawn to him. Had I known him in another life? Had he been a friend? Family? Something was unmistakingly familiar about this young stranger.
Slavik had journeyed to Panama City from Mexico on a bicycle and now had a mission to hop a freight train from the city to the coast. Not to travel but just to experience the thrill and challenge of it all. He left every morning, most days before I was awake, and returned each night after dark. I asked him every evening if he was successful, to which he would reply, “Not today but I’ll try again tomorrow.” I will never forget the day he returned beaming, success written on his face before I even asked. His tenacity inspired and influenced me to be more patient, to keep trying until I succeed and to keep a positive attitude when I don’t.
Colombia sees a steady stream of refugees fleeing, God only knows what, from neighboring Venezuela. If we are parked and they pass by, we often give any snacks we have on hand. Kevin even has a basket beside the driver’s seat filled with candy and individually wrapped snacks he gives out to children and those in need.
One day we passed a woman with three young children along a steep mountain road in the Andes. She had stopped beside a stream of water running down from the mountain. She was crouched beside the road washing one of the children while another brushed his teeth in the cold water.
As we rolled past, she looked up and our eyes met…
This small, broken family has influenced me to be grateful for all that I have and to always be kinder than I have to be.
A few minutes down the road, another refuge came bounding down a steep slope, his cart piled high with what I was sure contained everything he owned. He let the cart roll freely for a few feet before running to catch it. A boy of about ten ran alongside him, both were laughing, heads thrown back in pure joy. I was influenced to find the small joys in life’s hardest moments.
In a world where influence is often measured in followers and likes, I am reminded again and again that the most powerful influence rarely happens online. It happens quietly — in roadside encounters, campground conversations, and fleeting moments with strangers whose lives touch ours for only a moment but leave a mark that lasts forever.