It discomforts me to hear about people who don't like to travel.
Take, for example, a recent letter that appeared in the Ask Bossy blog at News.com.au.
(Ask Bossy is one of my guilty pleasures. People anonymously write in to Bossy, a.k.a. Kate de Brito, about their problems, Bossy usually replies with something sensible (and often funny), and then commenters get to weigh in as well. Reading the comments is a must, as they tend to a) cheer the letter-writer on, b) give them their own Oprah (or Jerry Springer)-like advice, or c) throw stones at them, all from the safety of their own anonymity. I can only describe it as participant voyeurism, and yes, I have done my share of advising and stone-throwing.)
After that long tangent you've probably forgotten why I mentioned Ask Bossy in the first place.
Righto. Anyway, this girl tells Bossy that she "would love to travel and live overseas for a year and really experience life", but her boyfriend isn't too keen on the idea. She writes sadly: "I have asked him to join me, but his reply was a blunt ‘yeah right, plus I’ve already been overseas with my parents’."1
Wow. That must have been some trip with Mum and Dad.
Look, I know home can be a lovely, warm, cosy place, but humans need to leave their comfort zones in order to grow and develop. There is a larger world out there, people, and watching the National Geographic channel just isn't the same.
We're not alone though. Even countries that we think of as crowded and modern have their pockets of insularity. I remember visiting a small town in the UK a few years ago for a relative's wedding. (We didn't know anyone from the area, but my cousin wanted to get married in a castle, and they had one. Enough said.)
I suppose we were rather conspicuous when we arrived, being the only out-of-towners, and non-Caucasian to boot. Cars slowed down when they passed us on the streets, and people would stop what they were doing and openly gawk at us. I kept expecting to see the Bates Motel appear on the crest of the next hill.
Later that afternoon, we visited a hair salon so that my cousin could get some trial hairdos. The stylists were a nice, chatty couple, transplants from Germany (or Holland. Oh dear, my memory is a little hazy on this one).
I asked them what it was like, living in this town. "Well, the people are nice enough, once they get to know you," said the man, fluffing up some ringlets on the back of my cousin's head. "But did you know, that there are people here -- young people -- who have never been more than 20 miles outside the village?"
I was dumbfounded. One of the largest cities in Britain, let's call it X, was only a half-hour drive away. You could fly to several cities in Europe from X for a song (well, five pounds or something ridiculous like that with RyanAir or EasyJet). How could you not go travelling with something like that right under your nose? I would be packing my bags for Paris! Prague! Berlin! Amsterdam! every month, salivating with anticipation as the weekend approached.
I love to travel. It is fascinating to find that places can be so different, but people, with their everyday kindnesses and worries and flaws, stay the same. One of the most rewarding things in the world is to try out a few, faltering words in another language, and find yourself understood.
It also surprises and pleases me to find that everything I need can fit into a suitcase -- that I don't need a lot of "stuff" to be content. You learn that you could live quite happily in a foreign country, that your ability to adapt is greater than you think. What a heady and liberating thought!
Travelling makes me appreciate home more. I come back and look at once-familiar things with fresh eyes. Everything is new, and for the first few days that I am back, I am a tourist in my home country, filled with wonder when I visit the supermarket down the road, listen to the local accents on the radio, or smell the lamb and sausages on a friend's barbeque.
Try it. Get out there. You'll not only discover new things about the world, but also find out who you really are.
1 I want to travel but what about my boyfriend's "needs", Kate de Brito, September 22, 2008 at 08:01. Link: http://blogs.news.com.au/bossy/index.php/news/comments/i_want_to_travel_but_what_about_my_boyfriends_needs/