Why do we travel?
It's a silly and pointless question for many. Some don't travel. Others find the question about as unnecessary as one that asks, "Why do we talk to each other?" For others still, it's less a silly question and more of an anxiety-inducing one. It's expensive and selfish (to varying degrees, of course), but at the same time somehow essential to keep on keepin' on. My good friend Jess, who is currently rambling across the French countryside, says of life on the road:
It's a silly and pointless question for many. Some don't travel. Others find the question about as unnecessary as one that asks, "Why do we talk to each other?" For others still, it's less a silly question and more of an anxiety-inducing one. It's expensive and selfish (to varying degrees, of course), but at the same time somehow essential to keep on keepin' on. My good friend Jess, who is currently rambling across the French countryside, says of life on the road:
Travel is in my bones. I need the hope of future travel to be fully content in daily life. Travel shows me the many ways my views and ideas are faulty, and it invites me to live into the truths of the world and live them out. It makes humans in other countries Real to me, so I cannot regard them as Other and thus dismiss them. It kills my apathy. It makes me uncomfortable and opens the door for real joy. I'm often miserable and depressed and scared and lonely when traveling, especially when traveling by myself... But the very fact that I'm traveling gives me enough joy and security that it transcends the other feelings. And sometimes, in the midst of traveling, moments I could not imagine because they are too perfect, too complete, too purely good actually happen. And those moments mixed with the daily struggles of travel --they change everything. They change me. And hopefully, then, my changed life in this world will ripple out to the people I encounter to create a slightly better world. That's the Hope I hold in travel.
There's very little in Jess's response that doesn't resonate loudly with my own fascination with travel. And while I haven't yet developed a poetically distilled mantra of my own to explain to myself why it is that I travel, it's been an important question for me in the last couple of months.
No, I did not say, "in the last six months," or, "while in Brazil." Perhaps surprisingly, I do not consider living outside the US to be synonymous with "traveling." I consider it to be synonymous with living somewhere that is not the US. And while I may never get around to actually understanding what I mean when I say the word "home," I have at this point been living in this apartment on Avenida Nazaré longer than I've lived anywhere since I started college. This twelfth-floor bedroom—with its window that looks out over mango trees and dozens of high-rises in pastel tile colors unrestricted by homeowners associations—is where my days have started and ended for the last six months. Some days, I haven't had an issue calling it "home," and some days, home has felt much more distant. Either way, though, I'm not traveling in Brazil. My living situation may have an expiration date, but it is still a living situation. I live here. I'm not even sure why this is an important distinction for me to make, but it is nonetheless.
Wherever home may be, I have indeed been doing my share of actual traveling in the last month or two. So, instead of rushing through a list of place-names and pictures, I'm hoping instead to highlight a few moments and places from the summer vacation over the next week or two (or three), vicariously reliving nights that required wool socks and sweaters, even as the thought of those right now makes me nauseous.
Meanwhile, I'll be ramping up for my final eleven weeks at the Universidade Federal do Pará, trying to rebuild some serious momentum where, after two months away, there is only inertia. Hopefully, by the time I actually get into the swing of the things, we'll be on the same page for the final chapters of this story. Till then, enjoy the upcoming series of posts on the destinations of the last couple months of travel!
No, I did not say, "in the last six months," or, "while in Brazil." Perhaps surprisingly, I do not consider living outside the US to be synonymous with "traveling." I consider it to be synonymous with living somewhere that is not the US. And while I may never get around to actually understanding what I mean when I say the word "home," I have at this point been living in this apartment on Avenida Nazaré longer than I've lived anywhere since I started college. This twelfth-floor bedroom—with its window that looks out over mango trees and dozens of high-rises in pastel tile colors unrestricted by homeowners associations—is where my days have started and ended for the last six months. Some days, I haven't had an issue calling it "home," and some days, home has felt much more distant. Either way, though, I'm not traveling in Brazil. My living situation may have an expiration date, but it is still a living situation. I live here. I'm not even sure why this is an important distinction for me to make, but it is nonetheless.
Wherever home may be, I have indeed been doing my share of actual traveling in the last month or two. So, instead of rushing through a list of place-names and pictures, I'm hoping instead to highlight a few moments and places from the summer vacation over the next week or two (or three), vicariously reliving nights that required wool socks and sweaters, even as the thought of those right now makes me nauseous.
Meanwhile, I'll be ramping up for my final eleven weeks at the Universidade Federal do Pará, trying to rebuild some serious momentum where, after two months away, there is only inertia. Hopefully, by the time I actually get into the swing of the things, we'll be on the same page for the final chapters of this story. Till then, enjoy the upcoming series of posts on the destinations of the last couple months of travel!