Travel is not an escape, but a return to self

I have been to seven countries in the past year. To some, that number of trips may give the impression I’m trying to escape something. I’ve returned home from several trips to friends and relatives who comment: “Well, it was time to come back to the real world.” 

There is something to the notion that real life is at home and travel is a form of escapism, an expensive fantasy that is fun for a time, but ultimately a distraction from the real problems of the here and now. I will admit that, at times, I have treated travel like this — a way to get out, to get gone. Yet, what I love most about travel, is not that it is an escape from the problems of the day-to-day, but that it is a return to self. 

Rediscovery

What so many people call the “real world” can become a bit gray around the edges after a while. Daily routines can start to feel like a draining monotony and humdrum doldrums. Our vision narrows, as we focus on meeting deadlines, getting the kids to school on time, paying the bills, and making sure dinner is on the table. 

However, travel allows us to shake off this monotony. Where do you get dinner in London? Which bus will get you from Florence to Assisi? How do you say “thank you” in Polish? In a strange place, you are suddenly surrounded by unknowns that make you sit up, pay attention, and stretch. Life, though it gets a little easier — no deadlines, no carpool, no crockpot — also gets a little harder, as the minutia of life are thrown out of balance. 

Without the treadmill of doldrums, you rediscover the world around you and the many ways people live in that world. 

Into the unknown

When I travel, I am perpetually surprised by how different people can be… and how similar. On a trip to Pompeii, my family were intrigued by a ruined building which had a long counter height structure with evenly spaced holes along the top of it. We learned that this was once the Roman equivalent of a fast food restaurant. Each hole would have held a flame and a large pot with various dishes kept warm and ready to eat. Imagine, fast food from 78 AD; your life and that of a citizen of Pompeii are more similar than you thought!

On the other hand, if you ever travel to Italy, be warned about planning sightseeing during the middle of the day. Italians hold fast to the traditional ‘riposo,’ a midday break beginning as early as noon and ending as late as four. People go home, take a nap, and have a long lunch. Forgetting this, a group of friends and I became stranded in Pollone, Italy, where we took a nap, played cards, and chatted for several hours in a church courtyard, waiting for the coffeeshops to open again. Could you imagine an American business doing the same?

The list of discoveries goes on. Travel to Turkey revealed the privilege it is to be a woman in America. A museum in Greece held a pair of 1,000-year-old earrings that I would wear today. Traveling from England to Italy made me realize the gift of my Catholic faith. Being the only English speaker in a room revealed the poverty of my language. Living in Florence in July made me rediscover the beauty of air-conditioning. (Seriously, such a gift!)

Return to self

Faced with an abundance of variety, travel forces you to reexamine yourself and the way you live. Not just in the little ways (such as developing a new taste for French pastries and Italian street food), but in large ways too: What speed do you want to live your life? What kind of person do you want to be?

I am, or want to be, the kind of person who loves sunsets, slowing down, and meeting new interesting people, in both regular life and during travel. I want to bring the Italian tradition of long dinners with friends into my own home, along with the British tradition of a ‘cuppa’ and a sweet treat in the afternoon. 

I want to be the kind of person who values experience over items, that values the people around me over and above success and popularity . I want to be the kind of person who remains curious, not just in far-away places, but in my own backyard, with a humility to admit I don’t know, and a willingness to rediscover. I want to be the kind of person that allows life to change me, with an open mind to learn, and an open heart to love. 

Manalive

In my favorite G.K. Chesterton novel, Manalive, the main character, Innocent Smith, is revealed to have traveled the circumference of the globe so that he may see his own house as a strange and wonderful place, rediscovering the gift of it, and the gift of himself within it. Chesterton writes of Mr. Smith: 

“His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world…for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home.”

My own philosophy of travel is quite the same; sometimes you need to leave home in order to find it again. Sometimes your pilgrimage is not so much about the destination but about the journey, and the way it changes you, so that by the time you return to your own place in the world you can look around it and say with Innocent Smith, “Oh, what a lovely place you’ve got!”