It’s Sunday afternoon, and as I sit here in Panera Bread listening to the chatter of a group from Boston and to a European couple’s discussion of where they should go next in the concrete jungle that is New York City, I ponder a question that I have pondered many times before – why do we travel?
The origins of travel stem from our nomadic ancestors. Before humans learned to farm, we had to follow food sources based on animals’ migration patterns and seasonal changes. As we picked up farming, the necessity to move dissipated. The desire to leave comfortable surroundings, especially at a time when travel demanded you hop up on your feet and go, I imagine, was nonexistent.
Today, as it did back then, travel offers an inherent uncertainty, an exchange of the familiar for the foreign. So what is it that is so alluring about the foreign? Is it that in a world of immediacy, propelled by the digital era we find ourselves in, we want to be anywhere but here? Or do we think that somewhere beyond that horizon, in the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean, in the misty mountains of Thailand, we’ll find happiness? Maybe it’s just the enthrallment arising from being on a journey, not quite knowing where you are or where you’re going, but still captivated by the discovery that lies ahead.
(Running of the Bulls -- Pamplona, Spain)
In my experience, we travel not for the tangible aspects – visiting historical sites, landmarks, etc. – but rather, we travel as a means to gain the intangible. A person on a journey exposes himself. Travel is an act encompassed by vulnerability – we are vulnerable to the hospitality of the locals, to our understanding of the culture, and, I believe, to ourselves. The car you drive or the house you live in means nothing when you’re surrounded by snow-capped peaks in that tiny village in the Alps. There is nobody to impress. What matters in that moment, is genuineness. What matters in any moment while traveling, is genuineness. And it is in those candid interactions with total strangers and with ourselves, that we understand a little bit more about who we are and the world we live in. In travel, we unveil our own truths of what is important, and we return home transformed. Yet, this only happens when we allow for the unexpected to have its place. Modern tourism is safe and pre-planned; as Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison said, “We take a vacation, not so much to discover a new landscape but to find respite from our current one, an antidote to routine.” It’s like going bowling with the guards up – you’re not going to know how to bowl when it’s all said and done. If you put down those walls, you’ll have an earnest experience.
It is certainly no easy task to embark on an adventure with an attitude of total candidness, but it is a worthwhile pursuit. From the challenges we face through the uncertainty of travel, emanates the discovery of life’s possibilities and of our own. We gain cultural perspective, we eliminate prejudice, and we acquire an essential understanding of how we fit into the sprightly world we live in. We wander, getting spun in two directions at once, our perfect angle on the world now slightly tilted, in order to get back to ourselves.
For me, traveling, unfiltered and easygoing, is something worth embarking on. It’s a lifelong project of better understanding the world – an understanding that we cannot grasp through our routine.
