Travel and belonging

It is hard to explain experiences to people. It is hard to explain what it is like living in other places, and the subtle ways it changes you. It is hard to describe feelings, sensations, psychological shifts. I say, "Uruguay is like people's imagined projections of 1950's culture in the U.S.: kids ride their bikes to school, there is little crime and violence, life is simple." But what does that feel like? It is so hard to say. 

What does it do to me, psychologically, to have friends who just show up for a quick visit? To chat with other parents as we drop off the kids at school and pick them up? To ride a scooter in the fresh air all year long? To listen to the sounds of birds at different parts of the day, and to see the minute differences in the land as the seasons change? How do I explain how that changes me?

I got hooked on travel and the experiences of it as soon as I got my first taste going to Rome in 2005. It's not just the experience of consuming new cultures, food, sights, sounds. It is who it makes me. I came back from Rome a different person than who went. Slightly more aware of difference in culture, more sure of what kind of life I wanted to pursue, excited about new and different foods and music and lifestyles. 

But travel and any new experiences can also serve to isolate. Who can relate to living on a different continent? Immigrants, of course, but we have so many other divergent experiences we cannot wholly share it all. Something happens, where your own experiences make you un-relatable. You don't really belong anywhere. You can't explain Uruguay to Chicagoans, and you can't explain Chicago to Uruguayans. You can generally get along and feel competent in many languages and cultures, but you are not deeply embedded in any one place.

I'm too far gone, too much changed now to go back to belonging in any one place. So, the only way forward is to embrace the cosmopolitan. To be able to fluidly navigate many worlds, and to make human connections everywhere. One of the insights of my travel (that is shared by many people who have taken journeys) is how much humanity has in common, despite our perceived differences. We all want peace, time in nature, love from others, companionship, to meet our needs, to not feel alienated or isolated or at war. We all like good food and a back scratch and laughter and cold water to drink on a hot day. 

Mark Twain put it best: "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.”