Why Travel?

In my time in Paris I had a really frustrating conversation with a guy at a bar. He made assumptions about why I was traveling that I did not appreciate. "I know why you travel," he accused. "I've read your blog, your wheredoshebe. You're lost, and trying to escape life. That is so much privilege." I had no words for him at the time, because it felt pugnant, and unfounded. It wasn't something I felt I needed to explain to him, nor did I know how to in the moment. Since then I've thought about it quite a bit and had many conversations, with the people close to me as well as new folk I met. I know that when I left Colorado two years ago, I had intention. This conversation, as vexing as it was, forced me to look back on that intention and reflect on its shifts.

To start: there are many reasons why one might want to travel, and I think those who travel often combine a few. Here's a list in no particular order, with a disclaimer that these are reasons people choose to travel for personal reasons, excluding situations where people are forced to relocate.

• Relaxing vacation

• Friend group trip or to reconnect with friends

• Bonding trip with someone close

• Sightseeing

• A retreat (yoga, wellness and mindfulness, meditation, athletic, etc.)

• Work trips

• Studies (for organized programs or workshops, or specific personal curiosity e.g. handicraft or technical skills)

• Humanitarian missions

• Religious pilgrimage

• Teaching

• Arts, food, or history passion

• Meeting new people

• Outdoor adventure

• Cultural immersion

• Learning a language

• Seeing something new

• Exposing oneself to discomfort

• Personal growth

• Wanting to go to every country

• Social media influence

• Partying

• Shopping

• Medical reasons (e.g. cheaper or more reliable surgeries, or legality of services)

I'm sure I'm missing a few but these are what I thought of.

A few days ago I had an enlightening conversation with my friend Anjali, who is on a similar journey to mine in some senses. It helped me remember why I started traveling in the first place...

We both happened to be engineering students at CU that took African Dance courses with the sage Nii Armah Sowah, with whom I collaborated to create a podcast called "Becoming a Global Citizen." Through the podcast and through his friendship, and mentorship, we often talked about what it means to become global and why it is important. We learned about creating and fostering community. "We need to be more like dogs," he'd say. Dogs don't waste time getting to know you. They always introduce themselves. And we humans will go to a dog park and know the dogs' names but not their owners'.

It has been four years since I took my first class with Nii Armah, and I can still remember the first and last names of my peers in the class; I can remember their stories. He taught us about the African village and the responsibility of that community. We learned that everyone has accents in the things they do. If someone has an accent in the language they are speaking, remember it is because they speak at least a whole other language! Someone's English can be impacted by so much other knowledge, and yet in the US people are treated as lesser-than because of said accent. The same is true with everything in life. As Nii Armah said, if you did ballet growing up you will dance African with a ballet accent. You work in unique ways because of all of the parts of your life that add up to where you are now.

I digress!! Well, not really—that class helped me realize how little I know. I decided to pursue a global education through immersive experiences. I don't think you have to leave your home to learn about others, but I think it does force you to do so; it is easy to become complacent in your own surroundings. I knew I had a lack of diversity in my surroundings growing up: in a majority-white high school program, at a majority white university. I somehow landed in the African dance program at a school where less than 3% of the student body was black or African American. And I realized I knew little about that community in the US. I'm grateful to my friends who have shared their experiences with me and to those who spoke up for themselves, but believe it is the duty of the privileged to be educated about the ways in which our society is inequitable.

All that to say, through travel I wanted to expose myself to different accents so that when I encounter them, I don't feel ignorant, or know how to engage in respectful ways. I recognized that I was lacking and wanted to address that. I also wanted to experience the unfiltered new. I wanted to dance with people of the world, learn about what holds them back, and what drives them forward. Why do they cook the way they do, organize their days as they do, dress, sing, speak, and express the ways they do? Each time I arrived in a new place, I let go of everything I thought I knew. I assumed nothing. I disconnected from my past ways of life in an attempt to expand my idea of what it means to live.

Some people have an innate ability to connect with anyone, like my sister for example. It's on another level. I strive to be more like that. So in my travels I studied what it means to be human. What is it people want? What do people have in common with one another, regardless of background? Or regardful or background? What is important in human connection? How and why does that shift between places?

The more we learn, especially by integrating ourselves into others' lifestyles, the more I think we become open to connection and understanding. Understanding how to be grateful for what we do have encourages me to share it with others. As I learn new languages, try new foods, see ways of reacting to different things, I expand my definitions for what life encompasses, and what is important.

That is what travel has meant for me. Recently I was with my grandmother in Iowa City. She used to be a high school teacher, and as we sat in the parking lot we saw a young girl in the parking lot helping her mother with the groceries. When my grandmother asked why that girl wasn't in school (it was 2 PM on a Monday), I said maybe she was homeschooled. Then I asked my grandmother on her thoughts about homeschool. Here was her response:

"If I had not attended public school as a little girl, I would have never sat behind the boy with the dirty neck And realized he did not have running water at home. We do not all have the same privileges."

Traveling is like an expanded public school. You will meet people of all backgrounds, and being around others exposes you to life different from your own. But my question to myself has been, "what do I do with all of the privilege of travel? What can I do with what I've learned to better society?"

There are levels to that. With the passing of my grandfather a few months ago, I was confronted with the amount of change one person can impart simply through connection. The number of testimonies towards my grandfather's impact in their lives was astounding. By focusing on his community and helping others, my grandfather created a remarkable legacy of genuine care, of laughter, and of neighborly community. I don't think you have to have capitalist power to be a positive change in the world. Obviously capital goes a long way for certain issues, but it's useless for others. Life always calls for kindness. It's inspired me to write a collection of short stories wherein human connection shone through perceived differences. Maybe I'll publish it eventually.

Anyway. In France I lost track of myself. So when that guy at the bar asked me why I travel, I drew a blank. I was so focused in the moment on saving up money for the next experience that I burned myself out from all my ends. By the time I made it to Japan for the karate seminars, I couldn't remember where I'd put my wallet or what day of the week it was. The karate seminar went by and I tried to volunteer with a few places, but I'd lost sight of why I wanted to travel in the first place. Now I'm clearer on the fact that I am exhausted by the moving around. Every time I build up community in a place, I move away and that is heart wrenching every time. So for now I want to find a job I feel passionate about and that I feel is making the world a better place. I'll hear back from the schools I applied to in about a month and go from there. If I'm not accepted I can look for certificates that I feel excited about and apply to jobs that I feel are productively challenging. And I am so excited for what that adventure might bring!

As far as engineering goes, I can't stress how important it is to know what being human means, and it's not a focus in our education. Engineers design the world, and whether building a road, a chair, a soap dispenser, food packaging, or defense satellites, understanding the end user is essential. Understanding who it is you are designing for, and how the product might be used (or misused). I think traveling gave me a better understanding of how to figure out what someone needs.

I feel so grateful for everything that has led me to where I'm at now—all the easy moments, all the hard moments, and everything in between. And especially grateful to all the people I've met along the way; whether or not we connected, whether people were kind or abusive, I learned something, and that has shaped me. I hope to use that to contribute towards a betterment of the world around me.

So to answer "Why Travel?": to become a better person, and use that to make the world around me a better place. My long-term goal was never to wander aimlessly. For now I think I've become more grounded in myself, which enables me to be there for my friends in ways I couldn't before. I'm more self reflective, and am able to see where I fell short in the past and where I can continue to provide in the future. I'm more patient, and when things are taking time to realize it doesn't bother me like it used to. Everything feels more relative to the big picture. I'm more generous, and happy to contribute in the ways I can towards occasions. I'm more aware of what I want, and more inclined to speak up for myself. Travel is a fast-track for learning about the self. I've gotten good at being uncomfortable, and I'm ready to apply it now!

Some favorite travel quotes:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." — Mark Twain

"Once a year, go someplace you've never been before." — Dalai Lama

I particularly like this because I don't think it has to be far. It doesn't have to be radical. It just means that we as humans should seek the new, and push our limits.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." — Marcel Proust

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." — Henry Miller

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” — Gustave Flaubert

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” — Maya Angelou

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” — James Michener

“Too often … I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.” — Louis L’Amour

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” — Dagobert D. Runes

“Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is, some part of oneself remains on another continent.” — Margot Fonteyn

“He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.” — Sinclair Lewis

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.” — Pico Iyer

“I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about, I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking twelve miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people—Americans and Europeans—come back and go, ‘Ohhhh.’ And the lightbulb goes on.” — Henry Rollins