As someone who has spent a lot of time in monasteries for my doctoral work and publications in Monastic Studies I certainly relate to travel as spirituality (and monasteries as WORK – but that’s my personal quirk.)
The first blog post I ever wrote included:
This site is about seeing. The topic may be travel but the “revolve” is the-seeing-that-transforms… The seeing I mean here is the seeing of mindfulness…But if this site ever loses grounding in persons – substituting statistics or truisms for real travelers – then it will have betrayed the author’s purpose.
That purpose is pilgrimage.
Responders’ stories of competitive consumption of language, culture,or waypoints on a map certainly illustrate consumerism but isn’t part of the reason we travel exactly because it gives us to chance to ask ourselves the question, “Why do we travel?” Grappling with what is such a core impulse in many of us reveals the superficial pressures to to travel but also illuminates our inner landscapes and gives shape to our life projects.
Recently at Solo Travel I was asked to talk about some of these topics from the perspective of travel with a disability (http://www.wanderingeducators.com/best/traveling/solo-travel-disability.html):
There’s a paradox to solo travel. It is there in the value we call inter-dependence which forms the heart of disability culture.
Unfamiliar environments remind us that even the simplest activities require us to rely on others. Environments that were never built for people with disabilities in the first place open that level of awareness to us permanently.
Solo travel, from the outside, looks like the ultimate in asserting independence.
Yet we know from the inside that it is really a way of deeply connecting with persons and place. By paring travel down to the essentials the solo traveler feels the consequences of their individual choices with a new immediacy. Solo travel is a lot like living with a disability.
]]>When I hear statements like “The men here are x,” or “The women here (or there) are so concerned with y,” I feel that certain travelers are using limited experience of another culture to feel that they have understood it – gotten it under their belt in much the same was Sarah talks about above.
It depends on the person.
And yes, there is a lot of anxiety and misery in travel. It shakes us up and gives us at least as many missed opportunities to see things differently as the ones we percieve.
]]>I don’t really have any answers to these questions other than to say I think they are all worth contemplating for ourselves, and to engage with our own views and lenses of the world. I didn’t note this in the piece, but the author said she is very much into structure, which is a personality trait we do not all share. For her, it sounds as if inspiration comes from staying in place; lucky her, she doesn’t need to see the world, and therefore “consume” it because she is set at home. I, for one, am not that way. I get inspired through experience. I’ve tried to fight it in the past, to stay still, but it doesn’t work for me. I need a balance, which includes staying still sometimes (in mind and body), and moving like crazy at other times.
And so I try and stay as conscious of my impacts as I move, which is actually the whole point of sitting still anyway (to be conscious of the now).
]]>But hey, All things go.
]]>Schwartz’s book sounds fascinating. It’s so interesting to hear from someone who really seems to hate travel. It’s a perspective you don’t often hear about this subject.
What really struck me was the quote you pulled about consuming other cultures through travel, and how she paints that was a way of participating in the sickeningly bloated culture of consumption. I’d never really viewed myself as buying into the consumer culture–which I despise–through my travels, but she definitely has a point. I’d always viewed myself as being deliberately outside of the consumer culture–as much as that’s possible, at least–and my travels as being a part of that worldview. I don’t go to casinos or go on cruises and generally avoid chains, kitschy tourist traps, souvenirs, etc. But man, she really opens up a whole new aspect of the dialogue here–just with that one quote. I was disappointed the Boston Globe article didn’t elaborate on that, and I have a feeling it’s not elaborated on in the book because it really brings up a whole new topic than what her book appears to be about.
Can we travel without being greedy consumers, even if what we’re consuming are non-material sights, sounds, and experiences? Is this problem inherent in traveling, and therefore unavoidable? Is this even a bad thing, or is it creating a new culture of consumption, one rooted in the spiritual rather than the material? What does that even mean? Yikes!
]]>There are things about every place I go that I despise, but without taking into account the little details that really get under my skin – the harassment, the smells, the street hawkers that won’t leave me alone – I have nothing by which to define a complete experience. All the wonderful things we encounter on our travels are countered by miserable things, but it is everything together that defines the full travel experience.
I don’t think it’s selfish to travel. I think people learn and grow by traveling and can therefore better understand, appreciate and define the world in which we live.
]]>Sometimes it all seems incredibly shallow to me. I really felt this in Borneo. There was this competition to get further up the river, further into where the “authentic” tribes lived, to go see this nature reserve and that and this giant flower, and it felt like, really, what is the virtue in this? It is very much the privilege of the (comparatively) wealthy traveler to “experience” the world – but ultimately is it just another form of consumption?
]]>I know that when I travelled around Europe at 19, by myself, I found it more challenging than I’d expected and often wondered why I was doing it. But if I’d stopped then and never travelled again I would not be the person I am today. Yes travel has negative aspects to it, I absolutely loathe airports: check-in procedures, annoying airline rules, and the waiting. While I still need to learn patience it would never stop me from travelling somewhere new. Personally I don’t view travel as a spiritual experience. If I’m seeking spirituality I would go to a monastery or specific place.
I see travel as about personal development. Some people attend classes with mentors and life-coaches, others seek it through sports or in their careers, but I see the world — both positive and negative, its challenges and annoyances — like a mentor. I’ve learned more about myself and people than I would have by staying at home.
Not everyone is suited to travel and not everyone is comfortable staying home. But everyone is entitled to their opinion on travel.
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