Everywhere is a destination

Yesterday I found a travel piece about my hometown (ok, about the fancy town next to my hometown) in the Guardian. I’ve been out of the area for five years, but it was still a challenge to accept the premise of the article: That, after crossing an entire ocean, a commuter town in suburban New York is a place worth visiting.

While home, I’ve been trying to cultivate a traveler’s approach to living in America, trying to see the usual as new. The Guardian’s article makes me acknowledge a related challenge: Seeing a familiar place not just as a discovery, but as somebody else’s long-awaited destination.

It sounds like a silly game: Try to feel motivated to visit where you already are, and try to imagine arrival at where you’ve been all along. However, if you can override familiarity and view your hometown this way–while not under the influence of homesickness–you’ll find it easy to view anywhere in the world as a destination. Not just Bangkok and Bariloche and Mysore, but Harlowton and Shoptykol and Grooverville.

And when everywhere is a destination, all of a sudden every day is travel.

Photo: Happy on the floor by Satish Krishnamurthy via Flickr.