Monday 05 August 2024
The older I become, I find great wisdom in the following adage: “Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.” Although the saying is misattributed to Kahlil Gibran, the advice is true enough. Not only are these people envious and boring, but they also have little joie de vivre.
Before my oldest son graduated from his undergraduate studies, he took a semester studying abroad. A curious neighbor asked me what my son was doing, since the neighbor hadn’t seen him for some time. As I was saying: “He’s studying in London this semester,” she angrily scolded me for “spoiling him.” Her words “It’s expensive!” tried to shame me. Many of the academic courses, room and board, and the uniquely London cultural experiences were covered by the college tuition my wife and I already had paid; of course, the cost of airfare was extra, but the price was reasonable, considering what existential and cultural benefits my son would get out of the chance to be in London for ten weeks. However, none of these explanations relieved her concern for my savings account.
“He studies and works hard,” “He’s an excellent student who saved up money,” and other arguments only made my neighbor glare at me more intently. My rationale of: “Traveling in Europe is different than it is here” redoubled her disapproval. “College is for getting a job, not wasting time or money” she instructed me, forgetting that I have been a university professor for decades.
I only began traveling the world myself after I became a married man, and I still painfully regret not going sooner. People would mockingly laugh at me for dreaming about traveling. “You don’t have money” always seemed, to these cynics, to be their decisive, most derisive—and in their minds, the most convincing—explanation as to my supposed doomed fate of never being able to go anywhere.
When living paycheck to paycheck, traveling anywhere, even within one’s own state, seems like an obscene, prohibitive, and bitter impossibility—and going abroad is just wrong, in the minds of those cynics. It’s true. New York City’s expensive attractions can make those sites inaccessible; however, many places of interest are free: American Folk Art Museum; National Museum of the American Indian; MoMA PS1. There are pay what you wish museums: American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art for NY, NJ, and CT residents; Brooklyn Museum. Of course, the many memorials, monuments, and statues in the five boroughs are free, such as: 9/11 Memorial Pools; Brooklyn Bridge; Girl Puzzle Monument. Visiting cultural and artistic sites doesn’t always mean paying fees; traveling can be affordable and, believe it or not, free of charge, even in New York. There are hostels in New York. Traveling can be within economic reach. I would rather go into temporary debt paying off an international or domestic trip than pay for the outrageously pricey cost of drinking cocktails in swanky, luxurious Manhattan bars.
On the other hand, I think there is a deeper, more emotional reason why some people look down upon travelers, especially global voyagers: cultural biases. They choose not to find any value, either cultural or transcendental, in travel. A strong anti-intellectual tendency still foments social divides in The United States along lines of education and cultural exposure. Being bookish, earning humanities degrees… hell, listening to jazz fusion music… and even a London study abroad semester are attributes of a cosmopolitan—a “citizen of the world”—an individual who wants more out of life and seeks out refinements that seem to the anti-travel partisan to be too sophisticated and less practical for ordinary, everyday living.
After all, you do need some historical understanding of the French Revolution to appreciate Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat… or French heavy metal band Gojira’s Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony performance of “Ah! Ça Ira.” Neither the art nor the song is satanic in the same way that traveling isn’t morally wrong. Traveling does what few history teachers can do: excite the individual to learn more. So, visiting Paris improves, can expand the conscious, even the conscience; such a travel experience can continue to flower a life-long curiosity.
Restlessness isn’t always necessarily an ethical shortcoming (writing my first book on Herman Melville’s restless whalers and their boredom, I know how destructive that ennui can be) or, dare I say it, a sin. Being on edge while at home shouldn’t be seen as a condemnatory judgment by disapproving village elders. After all, Ishmael did survive his trip to talk about the fish that got away.
And to those critics who only consider a traveler marking their 100th country visited in an Instagram post or YouTube vlog as a moral failure because the traveler can’t stay put… they forget that even friars, monks, summoners, nuns, and other ecclesiastical figures in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales traveled, too; yes, their trip was a holy pilgrimage but a trip, nonetheless. I know the following proverb wasn’t written by Saint Augustine but the life truth in it has a spiritual authenticity, one that touches upon a mystical, transcendental sensibility: “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” Indeed, the world was meant to be investigated and admired. Revering the world’s beauty and human creativity are moral triumphs, acts meant to be celebrated, not disparaged, by all of us.
My eyes… the most crucial carry-on item I bring with me on my travels… see the difference when I viewed Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling in an artbook and when I (finally) saw it inside the Sistine Chapel. And I felt the difference of eying The Prophet Daniel’s panel in the same artbook and of gazing upon it standing alongside my son when we both were inside the Sistine Chapel. No college classroom scholarly experience could ever impart upon me or my son what he and I gained from that Vatican City trip. I had waited over forty years! Forty-plus years to have that experience. Why… did I wait so long? I guess I waited for this moment… with my oldest child… and as a college professor… as a writer… as a man of the intellect. My son was a teen, and what enhanced my experience was watching him marvel at the scene.
No artbook prepared me for the experience of walking up those steps, passing through that unassuming door which leads into the Sistine Chapel, and basically stumbling onto that platform… with The Final Judgment just there… and the ceiling masterpiece above. Where to begin? How to begin? Should I first gaze upon The Creation of Adam or The Creation of Eve? Or should I study The Delphic Sibyl or The Erythraean Sibyl before The Last Judgement beckons me to look at it. “Dad, look?” Ethan stuttered while pointing at one masterpiece, tears rolling down his cheek. I can’t remember whether he drew my attention to the ceiling, the walls, or all of it, but all I could say was “I know!” I, too, stammered while crying. This moment (there are many others) explains to me (and hopefully to you, Reader) why traveling is not a waste of time or money. Spoiling my son? Please, don’t start!
Without my youngest son who insisted he wanted to visit Los Angeles, California, I would have never visited Randy Rhoads’ Mausoleum in San Bernardino’s Mountain View Cemetery. Thank you, Nicholas! Randy Rhoads was Ozzy Osbourne’s first guitarist in his newly formed solo band and my favorite heavy metal guitarist; Rhoads died in a tragic plane crash. His music taught me how to listen to music. Visiting Rhoads’ resting place was a pilgrimage destination; however, it was one I didn’t imagine checking off my bucket list because… L.A.? Me? Lala Land? Yes, L.A. seduced me with its The Broad, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Angels Flight Railway, Paul Newman’s hand and foot prints cast in cement at the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and on and on. Nicholas broke my stereotype of Los Angeles. We even rented a Ferrari to drive for an hour to the Hollywood Sign. How cool! Spoiling my son? Please, if any spoiling occurred, Nicholas lavished upon me his presence and inspiration.
German philosopher Walter Benjamin taught me the single greatest lesson about understanding and seeing a work of art and this same lesson applies to traveling: its aura. No matter how excellent a poster print reproduction of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment is, the copy cannot reproduce the atmosphere of the Sistine Chapel, cannot replicate my unforgettable father-son moment in the Sistine Chapel, and cannot simulate (even immersive virtual reality, computer generated goggles or large-scale projectors cannot fool absolutely the eye, mind, and spirit) the space inside the Sistine Chapel—with all its sensory catalysts. Viewing a work of art is more than just seeing the work of art; it also involves feeling the work of art’s aura, something which no technology can mimic. Playing hours’ worth of Forza Horizon 4 doesn’t come near to my experience of flooring the Ferrari’s gas pedal along the snaking and thrilling road of Mulholland Highway.
My wife and I didn’t want our children to experience our former existence of delaying seeing the world. My sons have traveled and continue to roam the world since they could walk. I didn’t dare tell my neighbor. She couldn’t understand that money is just money, and there’s more to life than making and saving money. What’s money for, anyway? She wasn’t entirely against travelling; her husband and she spent winters (sometimes) in Florida. I guess she had a more utilitarian justification for traveling than my own reasons, becoming a snowbird and nesting in the Southeast, a warmer weather climate for her arthritis. Soul sickness is just as dangerous to one’s health as physical ailments, but I restrained myself from sharing this observation with her. I decided that explaining my need for travel (and my son’s London experiences) would amount to little; she was dead set in her ways, and so was I.
Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth-century American essayist I once sought advice from, looked down on traveling. In “Self-Reliance” (1841), he writes: “Travelling is a fool’s paradise…the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action.” And I hear my neighbor’s voice when I read Emerson’s “Culture,” The Conduct of Life (1860), which says: “I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries, because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own, because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?” The American Protestant work-ethic at its demeaning worst! Before I devolve into an early onset curmudgeon stage of life, Mark Twain comes to my rescue, offsetting my bad temper. In The Innocents Abroad (1869) he reminds me that: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” There are many more spots I would like to vegetate in on the Earth than my tiny New York neighborhood.
If my anti-travel critics read my Herman Melville scholarly book, then they might use my analysis against my position that travel is not an affirming, beneficial undertaking. Yes, many Melvillian protagonists run away from their homes, chasing after whales or their Fayaway (in Typee, she is Tommo’s love interest—and yes, her name looks awfully like “Far away”) … anything but to get away from their homebound responsibilities and relationships. And to an extent, my cynics would be correct; moreover, were those Melvillian characters traveling or just working abroad? Moving about the world didn’t solve many of Melville’s characters’ spiritual and moral ailments; however, Ishmael does learn several life-changing lessons from his near-death experiences. Yes, traveling the world is dangerous; however, being land-locked doesn’t restore Bartleby to (mental) health; in fact, being trapped in one place for Bartleby did the opposite. Being stuck in one place, working oneself to death, and staring at that dead brick wall are just as frightening as the existential crises Melville’s characters faced out in the ocean. One’s problems go with you everywhere, and if you travel, your problems travel, too.
Some anti-travelers have said that going abroad only made them more depressed, less connected with themselves. Your life problems follow you everywhere, and like your shadow, you can’t run away from them. Melville knew that, too. Don’t blame the monks and gurus for their supposed failures of your inability to achieve nirvana during a week-long meditation retreat in Ananda in The Himalayas; blame yourself for not being able to connect with the Universe. Even the most efficacious and safest medicinal treatment requires time for its healing powers to take effect. Adrenaline, thrill seekers travel to exotic and alluring destinations just like the well-tempered, grounded explorers. And their experiences are different. The two types of destination visitors aren’t the same, and their experiences and takeaways aren’t the same.
Perhaps Tennyson was on to something when he wrote his poem, “Ulysses,” which dramatizes the self-perceived restlessness of an older but not wiser Ulysses who is bored with home, governing, and life; he wants to go on the classic “one last adventure” before he dies. No reflection when the hero returned from his odyssey only deepened his unresolved life dilemmas, causing the older Ulysses to desire to relive his younger glory days, which sadly can’t be duplicated. Instead of moving forward, Ulysses retreats backward, regressing to a nostalgia he thinks by going on one last big trip will invigorate his former glory within himself. Wanting to travel isn’t the root cause of restlessness or dissatisfaction; escapism’s causes are to be found elsewhere, certainly we won’t find them in the desire to travel.
Traveling can’t solve all existential or moral problems; moreover, just because the traveler exposes themselves to “foreign” cultures, food, and lifestyles doesn’t mean that traveling will make you more tolerant and experienced. Sometimes, the opposite happens; traveling can make some people more narrow-minded. I have seen too many American vacationers complain about how this country isn’t America, or that country’s food tastes funny… and ask, “where’s McDonald’s here.” Certainly, when I tried a Saint Petersburg, Russia Big Mac at McDonald’s, surprisingly the burger actually tasted like a burger—the meat, bun, sauce—unlike the ultra-processed ones we have here. Just because a travel influencer boasts that this place that they visit is to die for doesn’t mean you will have the same experience or reaction. No matter how much I agree with Twain’s hope that traveling erodes prejudice, I also know that the individual must want to dissolve their prejudice when they travel. The preconceptions won’t shed off on their own.
Wanderlust can be an excellent motivator, but, like many other things, when the globetrotter doesn’t appreciate their travel experiences or doesn’t study and learn from them, the jetsetter just goes somewhere, anywhere for its own sake—a meaningless, purposeless activity. Like any virtue, when corrupted, it can become a vice. So, too with travel.
At the same time, I think that what triggers anti-travel proponents is their fear to embrace what is different. What is different is supposed to be different, but that difference doesn’t mean that it’s a perversion, corruption, or deviation; for crying out loud, being different isn’t wrong. Comparing our homes with the places we visit is an unfair and hopeless endeavor, one that forever will be stacked in our favor. Accept that Kraków, Mexico City, Tokyo, Johannesburg are different cities from our own hometowns; they’re supposed to be different. Don’t condemn their differences; after all, the dweller of Santiago could see your hometown as “different,” too. Would they be wrong… like you? Just go and travel… somewhere, and allow yourself to be different, too.