Let me preface this by saying that I love traveling and think it’s probably the best way to get a broader perspective of this marvelous world we live in. That said, I think a lot of us are doing it wrong.
If you search “wanderlust” on Google or Pinterest, you will doubtless find a lot of images of barefoot or meticulously hipster individuals sipping coffee on top of a mountain or posed against a Volkswagon van. (Did you do it? Am I wrong?) Or you may find quotes, usually written on maps or on clean white journal pages, such as “Not all who wander are lost” or “I haven’t been everywhere but it’s on my list.”
These aren’t inherently bad things, or at least, I shouldn’t be the one to say so. (I own multiple maps on my walls, one of which has “Oh, darling, let’s be adventurers” written in the corner. And furthermore, I do have an unabashed fondness for coffee and Volkswagon vans.) But scrolling through those pictures and words, I get a creeping, uneasy feeling that travel is meant to be about you.
Let me explain: my first-ever international flight took over 40 hours, and in that time I didn’t get a chance to shower, wash my face, brush my teeth, or sleep for more than five or six hours. Finally, I landed in India. The air was hot and a muggy breeze waved the palm trees lining the airport parking lot. Driving through the city, I saw tall, colorfully painted buildings surrounded by families living under tarps next door. During my stay, I visited a slum school and received a garland of flowers to wear around my neck, to mark my value and welcome as a guest.
A guest.
That’s what’s missing from these images of wanderlust, from these romances of roughing it. It’s about what you will receive if you “just go” (another quote on a globe). It’s about how “travel makes you richer” or about checking off that place on your list.
Travel is a beautiful, exciting thing. I love it. In those days wandering airports unshowered and feeling very gross, I felt happy. It didn’t go the way it was “supposed” to, but that’s life and I needed to just do the next thing. In India, I knew that I was going to see poverty. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do much about it. I knew that most of the people I would encounter had grown up in that world, where spices and noises surround you and women were not as valuable as men and joy can be found in the simplest things and it’s felt so deeply.
But I was first and foremost their guest. I was not checking a destination off of a to-do list, I was not ending poverty or child slavery or gender discrimination. I was not on vacation, in an exotic place where I could “find myself” and send pictures to my friends.
I was humbled to have my lack of control made very obvious to me (no, Sophie, you will not make that flight you checked in for). And most of all, I was humbled to participate, as clumsy as it was, in a way of life that celebrated small joys and welcomed guests with a symbol of honor and a gratitude that shook me.
