I've done a fair amount of traveling in my life so far. I've been to countries ranging from Australia and New Zealand to Spain to Ireland to Italy and many places across the United States. I love to dream of traveling, to look at pictures of places I would like to go, and to read about them. Yet with all the dreaming of venturing to far off places there builds a conundrum, how much do we want to learn about where we are going? How many pictures of those places can we look at before we think we know what our destination looks like? Through globalization, we now have access to almost every corner of the earth without even leaving our house. All we have to do is flick on our computer and off we go. We can view pictures and articles of almost any destination on earth, those we want to go to and those we don't. Often times, our image of these destinations is shaped by others. We rarely take the time anymore just to read a general information guide say from AAA about where we are going and what there is to do there. Instead, we find articles that are appealing to us, ones that inspire us to love the destination more, and we find pictures that correspond with our vision of what we think that destination looks like. Yet for all the specific articles we read, which can be very informative, they are rarely written from a neutral perspective. They have a certain voice, a certain goal to be reached by the author, and are not always indicative of what we may actually experience should we go there. Granted, they may offer a unique view, one that may be shared by others, but often times we will have a totally different experience than the one in an article we read. The same goes for all pictures we look at of the destinations we hope to see. While these pictures can be breath taking and highlight the best of a what a certain destination has to offer, they are only a small piece of what is to be found. And we must also remember that photo's, while often a good representation of a specific locale, are also the best photo's taken of that locale. How often to we look at a picture, find it inspiring, and then after seeing the object of the picture first hand feel short changed? I know I do. Its like taking a picture of a stunning sun set and saying that it is a good representation of a sun set in our town. It may happen once in a while, but its not a regular occurrence. To think as such is to paint a place as perfect when often times it is far from perfect.
I find that when I am about to embark on a journey of any kind, I don't like to look at too many pictures of where I am going. Sure, I will find the ones of historic landmarks or well known vistas, but for the most part I will wait to see them on my own, to create my own memory of a destination and not have it tainted by someone else's picture. There is an excellent book that I would recommend highly to anyone traveling anywhere. That book is "The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton. One of the biggest points I took from the book is that whenever we travel, the expectation of the journey and the journey itself is often more exciting than the place we are visiting. We as humans have a tendency to put expectations on many things, and that includes our travels. We expect our trip to go a certain way, to see certain things, to have a given experience, to relax a lot, and so on and so forth. There is a rarely a time when we travel when we are void of all expectations. We expect the trip to go smoothly or we can expect it to be fraught with troubles. Whatever the case may be, we inevitably put some sort of expectation on our journeys. While I often have some expectations of a journey, I find that many times I go into the experience open minded. I try to release myself of all expectations so that my experiences of the journey do not end up tainted or lack luster. Perhaps its not so much as an absence of expectations as it is a willingness to go with the flow. If there are issues at the airport, I go with them, brush them off, and move on. I don't even like to plan to much of what I will do when I get to a certain place as I really don't know what it will be like there. I like to leave my travel plans relatively open with maybe a few key locales that I want to visit. Having a set agenda while traveling in my mind is asking for stress. Any itinerary rarely flows without error or interruption. There are so many nuances and unexpected occurrences that can happen that to not be flexible is to doom yourself to having a horrible trip. I remember an early trip I took with my wife to California. We had a few places we wanted to see, but we never booked a hotel and we never had an itinerary with specific places we needed to get to on specific days. Part of trip included traveling up the Pacific Coast Highway from L.A. to San Fran. We gave ourselves two or three days to make the trip and whatever happened in between happened. Whenever we saw an amazing view (which happens to be every half mile or so) we would pull over, snap some pictures and move on. It was amazingly relaxing, fun, and stress free.
While I haven't traveled very far in a number of years, even the small trips I make I try to leave any expectations off the table. Even when I go up to Vermont, 3 hours away, I may have plans of things I want to do, but I never set them in stone or put the pressure on myself to get them done. Any journey we make should have as part of it, a certain amount of time for relaxing. After all, isn't that part of why we travel? In addition to seeing amazing sights and visiting places that intrigue us, I view any journey as a time to get back to basics, relax a little, and actually enjoy the trip. In the hustle and bustle of our every day lives, we often forget to take the time to relax and enjoy things. And while globalization has brought the whole world to our doorstep, it is not shoved down our throats unless we allow it to be. We still have the opportunity to turn it all off and merely dream of where we want to go, paint a picture of what we think it might be like, and sometimes, those dreams are enough to satiate our desire to travel for a bit. Not everyone wants or needs to travel. For some, it is in their blood and the journey itself is sometimes more exciting that where they are actually going. For me, both the journey and the destination or exciting, especially when I can do it freely, without expectations, and with a willingness to throw myself into a different culture and be open and willing to let it change me. The trip I took with my wife to Ireland was just that. We rented an apartment for a week in a really small town and took day trips from there as far as we could. At the end of every day, however, we would end up in a pub with the same locales, talking about our day, their day, and both the similarities and differences between the lives we live. I would have it no other way. While the trip was our honeymoon, it was almost as if we moved to Ireland for a week, and then moved back home. Every trip should be like that in my mind. What's your idea of a perfect trip, a journey? Is it rooted in expectation or open to whatever happens?
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