I think a lot of people lean on saying that they're doing X "because of tradition" because it's socially easier than saying that you like it yourself.
Vague memory of a story of someone who was walking across America (or similar giant arduous travel project) who found that, if he said he was doing it because he wanted to, he got looked at weird, but if he said he was doing it for a bet everyone understood immediately. The latter anchors him in society, while having your own preferences makes you a loose cannon.
This leads to people travelling the world looking for a tradition to adopt, because that's "easier" than starting your own tradition.
I crossed the country from Georgia to California while homeless. I walked a lot and accepted rides.
People routinely wanted to impose some larger explanation, like "Are you doing a fundraiser? Are you trying to raise awareness for something?"
"I'm too poor to travel by planes, trains or automobiles" is an alien concept and large parts of this country go out of their way to make it difficult to walk somewhere. Walking as a means of travel ought to be some kind of basic right, but it's actually illegal in many places because you can't walk on the limited access roads and there are no other roads through there.
Nah. Rides covered most of it. We walked 10 to 17 miles a day and rides could cover a lot more than that in very little time.
I was evicted December 31st. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to me.
It was a three day weekend and I slept in a tent and I wasn't initially planning on quitting my job. After three days in a tent, I felt better than I had in years and decided I wasn't going back to my job to re-expose myself to more Sick Building Syndrome stuff, so I emailed my "I quit" notice to my boss and me and my sons left town on foot.
We arrived in Port Aransas, Texas about January 15th because someone had picked us up in Florida who had a flexible schedule. She said she would drive us an hour, but she really enjoyed talking with me and said something like "I'd drive you farther if I could afford the gas" and I said I would pay for a tank of gas.
So she made a couple of phone calls to clear her schedule for the next day and drove us to Houston, Texas. The next day, some very, very sincerely Christian lady stopped to pick us up and I explained we were heading to Port Aransas and she too just dropped everything and drove us to Port Aransas.
We stayed in Port Aransas for a month. The goal was to not freeze to death or lose toes to frostbite while crossing the Rockies in the dead of winter.
We left Port Aransas February 15th and arrived in downtown San Diego about six weeks later in late March. Actual travel time was about 7.5 or 8 weeks total. Even with a month in Port Aransas, we were in San Diego in under three months.
To be fair, we did not start at the coast in Georgia. We started on the other Georgia border, up against Alabama.
Vague memory of a story of someone who was walking across America (or similar giant arduous travel project) who found that, if he said he was doing it because he wanted to, he got looked at weird, but if he said he was doing it for a bet everyone understood immediately. The latter anchors him in society, while having your own preferences makes you a loose cannon.
This leads to people travelling the world looking for a tradition to adopt, because that's "easier" than starting your own tradition.