Is hitchhiking safe? The other side of trusting a stranger.

“Don’t talk to strangers”.

That was what my parents instilled in my head when they first brought me to my first day in nursery school. They taught me to never ever talk to strangers because strangers are bad people that may take advantage of me or worse kidnap me. Maybe they had a good reason for teaching me that. When we’re kids, we’re more vulnerable, and we’re still learning how to trust our gut, or maybe they watched too much 6 PM news before as that was their only source of information that time.

But as I grow up, see more the world, and meet more people, I realized that this old childhood fear that was planted in my head was limiting my growth and blinding me from so many opportunities. Talking to strangers is one of the things I enjoy the most now that I’m traveling and hitchhiking. After being on both sides of the road, as a hitchhiker and as a driver, I decided to write this article for both the driver and the hitchhiker. In my point of view, for both cases, we are human beings with a lot of preconceptions and judgments that the only thing that is causing is limiting ourselves to live memorable experiences.

We never hitchhiked before until 2018 when we started traveling full-time and we found ourselves living in a remote neighborhood in Hawaii.  Buses were sporadic and the cheapest, fastest, and most fun way to get around was hitchhiking. Before we thought that getting a ride from a stranger was dangerous. We were scared because we didn’t know the driver and who knows what can happen. We have preconceptions like:

“The driver can steal my money”

“The driver can take advantage of me”

“The driver can attack me”

But if you think about it, all these can also happen even if you’re just walking along a street or waiting for you next bus. And, you know what, the divers have similar fears. They have preconceptions also with hitchhikers and strangers like:

“Hitchhikers don’t have money and they might steal from me”

“Hitchhikers might take advantage of me and my car”

“I cannot trust a hitchhiker”

Did this happen to you? Were you scared to pick up someone? Or on the opposite, were you scared to hitchhike? 

But, from where did all this paranoia come from? Was it because of what our parent’s taught us to not talk to strangers? From what we see in the news or what we heard from other people? What’s the purpose of focusing on the one bad experience from others instead of the many great things that can happen?

We are too scared to fail, to be cheated, or to be robbed that we prefer to over-protect ourselves. We don’t want to take risks or put ourselves out there, which limits us from experiencing new things. We play it safe so nothing bad can happen instead of opening ourselves to all the great things that can happen from meeting strangers, learning from their stories, and letting a stranger bring joy to our day and making it extraordinary.

And here, I’m not only talking about hitchhiking, but I’m also talking about any experience in our lives.

Are we going to judge all the experiences as bad because of only one bad instance? Or, even worse, are we going to judge all the experiences just because it happened to another person? Are we not going to trust because “society” doesn’t trust?

Same with falling in love. Every couple starts as strangers. They meet not knowing anything about each other, but there’s the high and the adventure of trusting and letting your guard down so you trust you gut and open yourself to many amazing possibilities that can happen. In both relationship or hitchhiking, we have the risk of something bad happening to us but at the end of the day, it’s our choice to trust or not, to open ourselves to amazing possibilities or to limit ourselves because of fear.

We’re not going to lie, every time we hitchhike, we still get nervous. It is an adventure. We’re exposing ourselves to be rejected. We might meet a fun stranger or not. We don’t know how long we might wait or what can happen. But then, you meet these kind strangers, you hear their stories, and all those nerves disappear. You feel happy that someone was nice to give you a ride. That simple act of kindness makes you return to the basic principles of life. Like trust. When hitchhiking, they trust you and you trust them.

Either hitching a ride or life itself is about trust and adventure. Take the risk, trust your gut! There are more good things than the bad ones, it’s up to us on how we wanna look at it. Trust and enjoy life!

Watch this video. Hitchhiking is an awesome way to practice trust and be open to amazing things that can happen along the way. We hope this encourages you to trust.

What do you think after reading the article? Leave a comment and share it if you like it <3