“Yet all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and ever when I move”
Ulysses by Tennyson, lines 19-21
Let me step out from behind the curtain of third person point-of-view for a brief moment and speak without the filter.
This is challenging … all of it : the mining every event of every day of every trip, for pieces of interest I can sew together to make a theme; the writing it all down; the translating first hand experiences into third person by trying to hop out of my head and see the big picture; the scribbling in my notebook on swaying trains, turbulent planes and stop-and-go automobiles; the stitching together chaotic notes and incomplete thoughts to compose a meaningful essay; the choosing pictures that accentuate the story.
But I love it. It’s not the most riveting thing I write (in my narrow opinion) but it is challenging, meaningful and worthwhile.
I have chronicled two family trips so far and it has now become compulsory for me to do so. To go somewhere, to experience a place and time so different from my home in an organized manner and not chronicle it, record it, think about it, let it change me in some way, would seem like a huge waste of time and resources.Travel helps me learn about myself. It forces me to react to challenges, to new sights, new tastes, new people. Travel with loved ones helps me learn more about them and provides ample practice of conflict resolution and problem solving, like the problem of driving on the left side of skinny treacherous, high-speed roads.
“Do we have a neighborhood pub?” I asked myself upon coming back to our room from Cuilfail Pub in Kilmelford, Argyll, Scotland. It surprised me that I had to mentally walk a long way back to Michigan to find the answer. With my mind immersed in Scotland’s landscape and driving and houses and castles and beautiful language accents, it was as if Michigan lay deep in my memory and getting back to it took a lot of thinking. That is what I love about travel. For just a little bit, you are not yourself, not the same old, you get to live a different life. But you still have the familiar, and get to go home again, but as a slightly different person. By changing your point of view, your scenery and your comfort, travel (even to the next county over) changes you, just a little or a lot, depending on how much you let it.
I find that writing does the same. When you change your point of view, when thoughts become words, when actions and objects are cemented in ink or images, it changes the writer just a little bit. When \”I\” must become \”she,\” it changes you even more.
In his book, Man\’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl lists three things that make man\’s life meaningful. The first is to create a work or do a significant deed. The second is to experience something or encounter someone. The third way to create meaning in life (and which Frankl\’s book emphasizes, as he was a Nazi Concentration Camp survivor) is to rise above oneself, grow beyond oneself, thereby changing oneself.
For me, travel does all three. I create travel essays based on my trips, I experience (as you may have noticed) sometimes mercurial moods and emotions, while experiencing the new places I go to and thirdly, I am forced to rise above myself to do some of the things travel encompasses.
I am the caution side of the equation in the force of these annals. If it were up to me, we would rarely wander outside our humble state of Michigan, keep our feet planted firmly on the ground and never presume to wander into another country. That’s why the planning usually (always) falls to B.
A friend noticed that B did a lot of the planning, implying that I didn’t get to choose. Well, there is no injustice here, I assure you. He doesn’t have 100% say in the places we go, he just has the more outgoing, organized temperament and he knows where to go for great pictures. For me, there is always a challenge, a call to courage and fortitude on my part, as well as gratitude and love. I am more than willing to go on these adventures and scribble and stare as I wait for him to snap pics. My next adventure takes me and most of my family over the Atlantic, to England and Scotland, where, I hope I have chronicled the days well enough to make for an interesting read. I know the pictures will be spectacular, B took them.
As always, thanks for reading.
Not I 