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There was a time when each of us didn’t know a thing about travel. We had no conception of distance, of independence. We couldn’t imagine the desire to spend a night away from home, let alone feel that desire. Far? The grocery store was far.
But soon, childhood is drenched with the influence of exploration. Never-neverlands, kingdoms, toy trucks and planes and trains, ships steaming through the bathtub or sailing along the bedsheets.
Eventually these experiences silt up and the idea of going around the world becomes attainable. It’s no longer just for characters like Phileas Fogg–it’s a possibility for me too! From there, it’s only a matter of time until travel becomes a reality (maybe thanks to a last-minute push from a book like Vagabonding).
You can break the above sequence into four stages:
No Conception – Idea – Possibility – Reality
(Though not always sequential or in that order. Much of culture shock, for example, is merely an adverse reaction to a direct jump from No Conception to Reality.)
We have no conception of an infinite combination of places, people, and experiences. These reside in our blind spot–our future ideas, possibilities and realities. They emerge depending on how we choose to marinate our existence. (Luckily, we also have the potential for infinite epiphanies.)
We have ideas–awareness of our daydreams and nightmares, of other people’s possibilities and realities: Rowing across the Atlantic. Cape to Cairo via public transportation. The summit of Gasherbrum IV. Life in a cave in America with no money. Thirteen months in Afghanistan wearing body armor.
We have possibilities–one day I’d like to, you know we should really, next year I’m going to, I’m thinking of [blank].
And then we have realities–how we’ve invested our time up to and including right now.
What influences are you marinating in? What ideas can you turn into possibilities? What possibilities are you on your way to making real? What’s your right-now reality, and where did it come from?
Photo by Wili Hybrid via Flickr
November 18th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
What happens after? You work and work and push and align your life to accomplish some amazing travel goal, then you get there, you are there, and you leave. Then what?
I guess you just start over again!
I’ve never felt like something is not possible. I’m 23 and for all of my independent life, I’ve lived with minimal comforts or possessions and worked more than one or two jobs to build bank. I do all of that because I love to travel. I’ve slept on trains all over Europe, spent five months in West Africa, three months volunteering in Indonesia, two months in Argentina and two weeks in Antarctica.
Now I’m in graduate school, studying international public health. Hopefully once I have this degree, I’ll be paid to live abroad for periods of time, and I’ll also be able to work with people in the country I’m in to help improve their public health.
I want to see everything, to sit on deserted beaches in other countries, learn how to relax with cafe culture, explore areas of the world haunted by genocide, everything.
I don’t know where all of this came from, this sense of urgency to see, do, experience. We only get one life! I suppose I’m not like the average person though. I don’t have kids or a family so the most responsibility I have to weasel out of is my apartment lease and my job(s). Even then, we have to stop seeing traveling as taking time off from our “life”, and start seeing it as an all-important enhancement of our life.
So that’s where I’m at!
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:09 am
[...] Something to chew on when it comes to culture shock and being ready for the next adventure [...]