It may be because I'm getting older, but I am starting to notice that the concept of traveling is becoming a bigger issue among people I know. I have had friends who have recently traveled, and others who are planning to travel in the near future. Others have complained about their inability to travel at this time, but about how they will when they can. I've even seen the word "wanderlust" come up a few times in the past few months. All I can ask myself when I see all this is, why?
I know it seems strange to ask this question, but if you haven't noticed until now or this is the first post you're reading, I entertain lots of strange questions. To me they aren't strange, but I'm assuming to many people they are. Maybe that's how I make myself feel special...
Traveling is one of those things people say everyone should do. "Get out and see the world!" Why? I've heard various reasons why people should travel, and in all honesty, they all just seem like assumptions. It is often said that traveling can change someone's perception of the world. This is true of everyday life though. The longer you remain alive, the more information you absorb, and the more your perception changes. These changes aren't necessarily grand, but they are changes. Let's assume that the idea that traveling can change your perception of the world means it will change it on a large scale.
How exactly does traveling change someone? I'll start from a larger answer to this question. It is said that traveling has profound effects on the lifestyle of the person traveling because they get to experience new ways of life in their travels. This assumes three things: the first is that the person traveling is receptive enough to their environment to actually let it affect the way they live, the second is that they are not interacting with an environment created to satisfy the lifestyle they already lead, and the third is that this change will be positive.
To this first assumption I can respond that I know various people who have traveled to different countries and have returned basically the exact same person they left (maybe a little darker). If you need proof for yourself you can look at Donald Trump who has traveled around the world multiple times and is still the same bigot and hyper-capitalist he always was. Traveling, like everything else, does not simply produce results in humans. It is subjective. It affects everyone uniquely, and some people it may not affect at all.
This may be due in part to the fact that many people that travel, do so to locations designated for people to travel to. This deals with the second assumption. There is a reason resorts exist on the sunny little islands people travel to: it's so they only see certain parts of the place they travel to. There are various areas of cities dedicated to tourism, in actuality, it could be said there aren't just areas, but full cities dedicated to tourism. The culture in these locations is shaped and molded into something tourists can enjoy. Many times this means it is a place people can carry on living the lives they previously led, but in a place with a different name they might not be able to pronounce.
This leads to where the third assumption can go wrong. If a person travels to a location where nothing has changed except the location, can they really be expected to change positively? Or will their change be similar to changes they would have gone through where they are from? We can't really know.
Another response to how travel can change people is that it can educate. Once again, I can see how this response seems plausible, but I believe it is emphasized more than it should be. It is true that travel can educate someone. When faced with a new environment, people must adapt to survive in this environment. In order to do so, some new skills have to be learned. The substance of the skills learned isn't necessarily something to be praised though. A person can learn a few phrases in french to survive in Paris, but that doesn't appear to have the impact proposed by the assumption that travel educates you. Perhaps this idea wants to deal with something other than factual knowledge, and is attempting to describe a sort of existential education. In that case, it seems to be quite pretentious for a person to believe that someone is existentially ignorant.
This post isn't as in depth as it probably should be, but it is late, and I just wanted to get some ideas in writing. To summarize, I guess what I'm trying to say is that travel has become something advertised to people under vast assumptions that pressures people into believing they need to travel. If you don't travel you are looked down on, if you have traveled you are praised for it. Traveling is a choice, and it is not necessarily beneficial, so do not assume that you must travel. If you do, truly analyze your reasons for doing so. If you find yourself saying "Everyone should travel," as if it's something you simply should do, take a step back and really think about why you are traveling, or want to travel.
- Dennis
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