I am....
~ Engulfed in the Utopia of writers and writing, art and creativity.... engrossed in the cobweb of thoughts....weaving in and out through the little intricacies of life ~
While you want to travel to find yourself, I want to travel to find out more about other people…
I’m tired of the internet telling me how to live my life. No, I’m not talking about the ads that seem to be tailored to fit my every whim and fancy, I quite enjoy online shopping. I’m not really tired of social media either, I don’t mind reading about what people have been up to, or connecting with long lost friends. I don’t get the backlash – people can misuse just about anything, so why put all of us into little boxes? I see no harm in any of these things. There’s no intense hatred, I’m willing to let those lie, although I do have my anti-internet days. But, I can always bury myself in a book and forget. No harm done. This anti-social-media war is, quite frankly, pretty tiring to me.
But I’m really; really tired of the internet telling me I have to travel. I don’t mind reading about people’s travels and I don’t mind looking at their pictures and congratulating them on their gorgeous sea-facing villa escapes. But, there’s a dozen people in my life and a couple million in the world who are right now, at this very moment, perusing through travel blogs with green eyes, snipping out little pictures of the Eiffel tower to pin on their walls (ah because Paris is très chic) and pretending to be part of this big, enlightened movement because they climbed to the mountains for a week or took a trip to some obscure destination that’s, well, not commercial or expensive or luxurious.
They’ve roughed it out, done it all by themselves and thus earned their Columbus badges, they’re in an inner circle that the rest of us aren’t privy to because we haven’t given up our jobs yet to join them in their romantic, idealistic notions of what travel should be like. Because there are rules now. Because it’s exactly what these social-media-hating, free-thinking, travel-loving people don’t want it to be. Just another trend. Everyone’s a photographer. Everyone’s a traveller. Heck, everyone’s everything these days.
The problem really, is that it’s not really going to enlighten you. It’s not going to suddenly open your eyes to new things. You could gush about the billowing leaves and rivulets dancing around your feet all day and it still won’t mean you know how to live any better. If you’re aiming to travel to ‘find yourself’ – I’m wondering why you need to escape your own life in order to be able to do so. And why are you so lost in the first place? Where is this identity crisis coming from? Or is it just because you feel you must have a sense of despondency and gloom in your current life to be able to truly soak up new experiences? Vacations – I’m all for vacations. You didn’t have to give up your job (ah the consistent, unreasonable job jumps are just another pet peeve I’m afraid) and spend your life (well, three years probably) savings on a year out of the country.
This by no means suggests that I do not want to see the world. In tune with the generation I grew up in, I feel an insane urge to get up and set off across the world on some sort of solo backpacking journey and come back with tales of travel that are wild enough to write about in a Bill Bryson esque novel. The thing is, Bill Bryson, with all his OBE worthy tales of lands and cultures (Notes from a Small Island was my first and most significant Bryson book. The rest are much less memorable, but maybe it’s because I’m not exactly living vicariously through him) – is, well, Bill Bryson. And I don’t want to be Bill Bryson. And I don’t want to be Columbus. And I don’t want to travel just because if I don’t I’ll miss out on some essential part of my life. Must I really travel in my twenties? There seems to be some sort of time stop on it – as though if, god forbid, I wanted to earn and put away some money instead for (shame on me for saying it in a YOLO world!) my future. If I wanted a steady job that paid me every month till I managed to put away enough to do all those things I want to do – would that really be so bad?
There’s this urgency in every 20 something around me. Do I feel it? Yes. Probably not for the same reasons though. I don’t want to throw my hands up in the air, give up everything and roam the streets of Paris. Oh I’d love to roam the streets of Paris, but I’m pretty sure I’d like to have some sort of assurance I wouldn’t be roaming streets forever. I’d love some place to call home… a bank account with my name on it…
Where does all this come from? I was okay with it when it was walking around masquerading as strange people I don’t know over the internet. And then this disease started to affect people around me. So now, there’s people who’ve never picked up a book in their lives, pretending they’re suddenly going to learn all there is to life and everything about the world and its people by taking a trip to the mountains, sitting around in a huddled group by the beach and taking pictures of the ocean. Where’s the balance? I’d love a balance. While most people I know spend their entire life talking about travel, making one trip (ah but I must mention – on their daddy’s credit card more often than I’d have liked to witness) and then pretending they’re philosophers… it just makes me wonder why they think there’s so little time left to travel and so much, to form solid careers. What’s wrong with being in the place you are, with yourself? Why are you so scared to be you, now? Why do you need to get away so much? Of course, the pseudo traveller would never agree this is why they’re getting away. They’re explorers, wanderers, free souls…
Here’s the deal though. Travel is expensive. It just is. Even a weekend out of town is going to set you back at least a couple thousand. It’s definitely a better investment than a lot of things we spend on in the city, sure. I’d much rather be staring up at the stars than stuck in a rickshaw for two hours and paying the same amount in a week or two. Go ahead, take a road trip. Explore the country, see the world. But I don’t want to do it because I need to find myself. Or because I’m trying to get away from this ‘over commercialised life (insert frustrated 20-something speech about the evils of consumerism here while booking plane and EDM concert tickets over the internet).’ I want to travel to see the world. I want to meet new people. And learn about new cultures.
But, I don’t subscribe to the view that there’s a time cap on that. Sure, sure, life is short. You never know etcetera. However, what happens if all your planning for the end stretches out till you’re thirty and then forty and then – oh dare I say it – fifty and sixty and… Well you’re an old, wrinkly little creature lounging around on a beach somewhere with a coconut for dinner. Alright, let’s not make it so dramatic.
Don’t worry. If you’re a traveller, I don’t hate you. If you’re a grounded traveller, with a steady job who thinks about where they’re going to be in 20 years and decided soak up something apart from posts about why they need to travel, I admire you. If you’re a traveller who has a life, an individual sense of self and absolutely no airs about being part of a secret travellers group, I want to be you, or maybe accompany you on a trip sometime. And if you’re the sort of traveller who can tell me all about where you’ve been without trying to hint that I’m wasting my life at my job, or spending too much time working when I could be travelling, or asking me why, why is it that I don’t really love travel (ah the misconception), or warning me about how every year it will be too late – you’re probably my best friend.
I’m going to travel, I do travel and I will travel. Maybe my weekend trips are not as enlightening as your week-long hamlet sojourns, but I’d rather not think of my life as over just yet. I’d rather work my butt off while I still have the energy to do so. I’d rather take a vacation than find an escape route. I’d rather work on loving life where I am, than trying to find a way to flee it. Of course, that’s probably just me. And that’s okay. I’ll probably still read the articles. I’ll always still want to travel. I guess I’m just okay with wanting to ‘truly live’ anywhere in the world – at any given point of time. Not just when I’m travelling.
*After writing this in the midst of a set of pretty tough exams (surrounded by posts of ‘Travel now’ and ‘Why every 20 something should travel now’ and ‘Things 20 something’s need to know about travel’ – with probable tweaks in the names) I put it away and forgot about it, scribbled on a sheet of Ginsberg notes. And then while doing a major overhaul of all these scribbled notes to throw them out I found it, typed it out and then sat on it for around a week, confining it to that ‘Random’ folder that is usually, quite mysteriously deleted. And then, today, I finally decided that I could post it. I mean, I can delete it if I really want to, but like most things on the internet – no one’s really going to see it anyway, right? ;)