There are lots of reasons why people travel.
“I travel to escape home for a little bit.”
“I travel to see new things.”
“I travel to relax.”
These are all great reasons to travel, undoubtedly. The reason I travel, though, has absolutely nothing to do with le Tour Eiffel or La Alhambra or Canterbury Cathedral. It has nothing to do with standing in front of those (horrifically ugly) pyramids in front of the Louvre. Traveling for me isn’t iconic sculptures and stumbling off six-hour flights, pushing sunglasses over beautifully tired kohl-rimmed eyes.
Travel is about language. In English, I have the opportunity to express myself as freely and in as much detail as I would like. In French, in Spanish, I am reduced to the most elementary expressions I know. I can say “I am hungry. I am sad. I need the bathroom. I would like a coffee. You are handsome.” Without the ability to express yourself, your character becomes determined by your actions. This is an advantage that follows you home -- succinctness is something beautiful that should not be restricted to knowing three verbs.
Travel is about separation. When you travel somewhere new, you realize how much of your life has been dictated by the cultural norms of your home country. The informality of Americans, our propensity to dictate our days by how many hours remain in them: These are concepts that do not work in other countries. Lunch breaks are just that -- breaks that last for the duration of lunch. Not an hour in which you can eat lunch. You learn to separate your identity as an American from your identity as a world traveler, a citizen of the city in which you find yourself. And within this separation, you really might find yourself.
Travel is not plans. It is missing your stop for Dover and finding yourself in Folkestone. It is hostels, where you can hear that we all sleep in the same language. It is pointing at beards and saying the infinitive of "like"; it is receiving a toothless smile in return. It is meeting new people and learning that the world is so much larger than what we can possibly confine to an article. It is sweaty bodies packed into a passenger plane, the Air France hostess singing French lullabies to a crying Chinese baby. It is sangria in the streets of Granada. It is shedding travel of its glamour, because there is no glamour in sleeping on airport carpet waiting for a layover that happened six hours earlier. Travel is the way you sneak to the sides of old buildings and trace the lines of stones laid by someone infinitely less and more wise than you. It is deer paths carved through woods that lead to sullen benches that look surprisingly like the ones at home. It is finding out the lengths that people did and still do go for their religions and their loves and their passions. It is making new friends while your cheek is pressed to that airport carpet, it's shaking their hands and opening up a new world. It’s saying “Maybe I don’t need to do things the same way at home.” It is rediscovering the joys of pleasure reading and of hot beverages in cold cups. It is rain ruining your outdoor plans, and then it is realizing that the rain has only heightened the day’s capacity for enjoyment.
Travel is an amazing thing. It is not beautiful, not always. It is a challenge to yourself and a challenge to others. You learn to appreciate the simple things in life, and you learn to cherish the familiar only by experiencing the unfamiliar. You learn that every unfamiliar is familiar to someone, that your “travel” is their “home.” You learn that being from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for you is an excuse to make cheesesteak jokes, but for someone else, that is an adventure waiting to happen.
You learn to see the adventure in your backyard. You learn to see the extent to which your own town and county and state have been left unexplored. You see opportunities everywhere, mostly because you learn to watch and learn.
At the end of the day, I don’t remember the Eiffel Tower. I remember the fact that its restaurant is named after Jules Verne because he hated the Eiffel Tower and writing while on it was the only way he could write in Paris without looking at the damn thing.
These are only a few reasons why I travel. I invite you to travel for these reasons, and whatever other reasons you can find. I invite you to separate and learn and regroup.
I invite you to see the adventure in every single day.
