Photo: L’Enfant Terrible
We often hope to leave our troubles behind when we travel. Problem is, they follow us wherever we go.
It’s our third day in Dublin, and I wake up depressed.
This isn’t a latent sort of sadness. It’s an active force, a thing that comes over me suddenly and without warning, possessing every atom of my body. It’s an attack of what Holly Golightly calls the mean reds in Breakfast at Tiffany’s: “Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.”
Being in Dublin doesn’t help. I’m a worrier by nature and I came here, as I often do when I travel, hoping to claim immunity from my worries. Anything to declare? Just a lot of unnecessary anxiety; can I leave it at customs?
I sit in a café with my boyfriend. I tell him I feel unhappy today, but that I don’t know why. There seems to be too many things to fret over: my desperation at being stuck in a job I hate; my long battle with anti-anxiety medication; my lack of money.
I feel that I could easily wallow all day. We walk through St. Stephen’s Green, along the edges, where leaves are falling most heavily and we can avoid the stink of the central pond. A trio of teenage boys play guitar; a pregnant woman passes, with flowers in one hand and a man’s arm around her. Infants run rampant, with parents trailing behind in helpless pursuit, all flapping limps and rattling prams.
A few other lovers hold hands. I feel unoriginal and uninspired; and then I feel the whole world to be unoriginal and uninspired.
Changing Locale
We chose Dublin more or less at random; it’s near enough to our home in England, the flights were cheap, we could fit it into a long weekend.
Photo: lrargerich
The destination was not important to either of us. What was important was the thought of going somewhere.
Autumn was upon us; the smell of decay, the naked trees, the dying grass. We hadn’t been away in months, and I was sleeping badly. We thought we could run away.
It seems simple enough. As humans, we’re trapped in our own chronology. We are born, we live, we die, and we have little or no power over any of it. What we can control is our physical location, our place on the map.
Nowadays, with the click of a button, we can buy tickets, be halfway across the world in twelve hours, seamlessly cross time zones, date lines, hemispheres, change latitudes and longitudes. Escape has never been so easy.
Or so impossible. Here we are in a new city, but everything is the same. We are as connected as ever to our past, our anxieties. The cash machines in Dublin are no different than the ones anywhere else, reminding me I’ve got only barely enough. The emails keep flooding in and I sleep as poorly here as I would anywhere else.
Because the trouble, of course, is that travel is not escape. Alain de Botton writes about this in The Art of Travel
When we go somewhere new we hope either that the banalities of everyday life won’t follow us, or that we’ll become someone different in the context of a different space. But travel is not some magical process of transformation.
Travel Is Not The Answer
At best, travel is a state of mind – a way of revising our views of the world and ourselves, of exploring and watching. But it’s never the answer to all of our problems, never a method of erasing anxieties, and to a certain extent this will always be a disappointment.
Bridge of Sighs, Oxford / Photo: rbrwr
What I forget is that it’s actually freeing to know all this – for if we do, we can start to think of travel beyond sightseeing and souvenir collecting.
I remember why I first traveled to Oxford, where I now live. I wasn’t trying to escape anything; I was trying to find something. That’s different, I now believe.
In searching for the Oxford I had read about in literature, I gave myself a purpose, a reason to explore, a kind of quest which framed everything I did. It was a positive, rather than a negative, reason; I wanted to enhance my life, not run away from it.
Of course, I abandoned my quest; I got distracted by a thousand little things. A love affair, an unhealthy affection for the pub, an obsession with the city’s history. Suddenly I was not visiting Oxford; I was immersed in it. I was part of it.
And that’s why we travel, or why we should. Not to forget our worries, which will follow us anywhere – across oceans, up mountains, through deserts, down every crowded alleyway and boulevard of the city – but simply to be somewhere else. To exist, as always; but to exist in different surroundings. What happens after that, we can never really predict.
Tourism isn’t about losing our inhibitions and acquiring postcards. It’s about a deeper, gut-level bond with a place.
Tourism isn’t about losing our inhibitions and acquiring postcards. It’s about a deeper, gut-level bond with a place, which requires we accept that the only way we can be changed by travel is if we’re willing to accept that we might not be changed by it at all.
“Geography is not an inert container,” writes Franco Moretti in his Atlas of the European Novel
Every country we visit is an active force. Every city, every street, every patch of woodland or plain has the potential to swallow us, if we only let it decide for itself.
Soaking Up Place
Photo: wolfsavard
Later in the afternoon, my boyfriend and I decide to forgo our hopes for soaking up the culture of Dublin.
We take a long stroll across the Liffey to a huge, ugly theater, buy two tickets, and sit in the dark, eating popcorn, sipping soda, doing something we could do anywhere.
And I enjoy it so much that when we emerge, I have a smile on my face, I feel light, as unfettered as I have in a month.
Maybe going to this cinema, fleeing the sunshine for the smell of popcorn, the endless dark corridors, the escalators – maybe this is the point of Dublin. Or of anywhere. It doesn’t matter what we do in a place; just that we do it at all. We soak things up without trying; and maybe, if we tried a little less, we would soak up a little more.
Do you think travel can act as an emotional escape? Share your thoughts below.
About the Author
Related Posts
14 Comments... join the discussion!
-
-
This is lovely writing. And in short, I think that travel as an escape merely depends on what it is you’re trying to escape.
↵ -
I was just thinking of this the othe day. I would say that, in regards to our problems, travel is at best a distraction. Eventually they surface again in our minds because, as you say, we carry them with us.
On the other hand, I don´t remember the last time I didn´t have some sort of doubt/worry/guilt weighing on me and if I waited until I freed myself of those things to travel I would never have traveled anywhere.
↵ -
For many people the attraction of travel is that they get away from their everyday lives, expecting to experience something different. They are ready to immerse themselves in new experiences, people, foods, smells and sights. What they don’t realize is that what makes travel feel so special is that they are finally paying attention to things: what they see, taste, feel. They briefly escape from a life of constant inner monologue that masks what is going on all around them, and inside of them, all the time.
If they focused themselves to be open to the present where every they are, they would have moments of transcendence without even leaving home. The sugar melting onto the icecubes floating atop their ice tea would appear as exquisitely beautiful as a faraway snow-capped mountain. A conversation with a neighbor would be a joy as keen as ordering food from a street vendor in a foreign country. As Jon Kabat Zin titled his book, whereever you go, there you are. What you bring to travel, and your openess to life, defines every moment, just as it does before you ever leave home.
↵ -
What a beautifully written and thought-provoking piece! It’s true; we sometimes try too hard to have a certain kind of experience while traveling, rather than allowing the experience to simply be what it is. I have learned that a good trip includes time for aimless wandering or sitting around noticing the mundane of a place, and days to just empty out and be sad or bored or disappointed or whatever we happen to be feeling. Travel can be as much an encounter as an escape. Or neither. Or both.
↵ -
One of the best articles I’ve read so far…the voice sounds uniquely human, authentic.
↵ -
I really love this line: “We soak things up without trying; and maybe, if we tried a little less, we would soak up a little more.” Travel really is a mindset, a conscious choice to experience life in a different way. In fact, the word travel just doesn’t cut it anymore, I don’t even like to use the word anymore to describe what I’m doing.
↵ -
It’s funny how a difference in just a few dollars (or Euros) can make or break happiness in some. When I’m down, I look at couples strolling hand in hand, seeing carefree locals dining out, tourists shopping for knit knacks, and I wonder what separates me from them, how is it that something as unimportant as money has such power to control my perception of others and the places I visit? I can only see what reminds me of what I don’t have.
When I’m up, I also question why it is I should be affected by money in such a way, and vow to never let it bother me again. Sadly, this lesson doesn’t always stick. Money isn’t necessary for happiness, but it certainly makes things easier.
↵ -
I absolutely love this. Yes, it’s beautifully written, but it’s also a brave piece, delving insightfully into topics a lot of people don’t want to think about, let alone write about.
The discussion of escapism via travel struck a nerve. In recovery, we call escapism via moving/traveling/changing locations “pulling a geographic.” The problem always is, you take yourself with you. (”I moved all the way to Texas,” a friend slurred in a blackout, “to discover I’m still an alcoholic and addict.”)
I also love the resolution, that it’s tied back into finding a connection with a place, abandoning ourselves to a place. Really, really great stuff.
↵ -
Wonderful article that really resonates with me and many others. I am currently living in Thailand and engaged in a never-ending debate about whether to stay longer (1 year of Southeast Asia and India so far) or go home. I battled depression and anxiety for years and desperately searched for an escape from what I deemed an uninspired and suffocating life. In analyzing my motivations, I determined that my belief that things would be better abroad was false. However, I still clung to the hope that I would be happier in Asia. From the moment I stepped off the plane, I was overwhelmed with a sense of disappointment and restlessness. Throughout my travels, I have had ups and downs, and at times have truly let go and enjoyed the magic of my surroundings. Yet I find myself settling here and, surprise surprise, in exactly the same situation I was in before- both in terms of relationships and the inner experience. Now I find myself thinking “if only I could just go home”.
Sounds silly, but it is an easy cycle to get stuck in no matter how much insight you have into your self-styled patterns.
↵ -
Wow. This was so well written…I like that line about declaring your anxieties at customs. I wish we could all do that when we travel, just put our worries and problems in a box and hand it over to the customs agents and then pick them up again on our return home.
I think everyone has their own way of escaping their problems and coping with stress. Some people over-eat, others over-drink or watch too much TV or spend too much time online (guilty!). Perhaps for some people (travel addicts in particular), travel is just another method of dealing with stress.
↵ -
I agree that travel is a state of mind and will not melt away our problems. But new experiences of travel (and new experiences in general) do have a way of shaking around our minds so that we may view things differently. This fresh outlook extends to viewing ourselves. The act of travel can be a facilitator, not a changer. Travel won’t change you; but you may find that you have changed yourself through travel.
↵ -
Well said Darrin.
↵ -
I like to think of travel as a break, not an escape. I allocate myself sometime to reevaluate where I am, when it’s not really possible in the midst of all of the comfort and technology that is either the small apartment in my college town or my room at my parents’ house. I feel tied down to things too often and traveling helps me appreciate experiences in ways I can’t at home.
Of course, I am not the worrying type. I always have money troubles, but that just means I eat cheaper (but still make sure to include enough fresh produce) and pull do some odd errands for people and families in my community who provide me not only with decent pay, but often a meal!
↵
