Why do we travel?
October 23rd 2006 08:04
"When I was very young and the urge to be some place else was upon me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don`t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the the disease is incurbale."
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
Appologies for such a long quite but does it not sum it up beautifully? Some people get it and some people don't - that urge to travel and see foreign lands. Most people I know don`t get it, but every time I see a plane, every time I walk past a travel agent, every time I hear of someone going away I can feel that urge starting in the pit of my stomach. It does not matter what I try to do to settle down, find some stability and do what normal "adults" are supposed to, my desire for travel overrides it on 10 out of 10 occasions. Is it the urge to escape? Is it the desire to see if the grass really is greener on the other side? Perhaps it is a need to experience new cultures and meet new people? Or maybe a little of each. I don`t have the answer, but I sure do know that sometimes I even drive myself mad with it! Please let me know there are other people out there who suffer this same maddness!
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
Appologies for such a long quite but does it not sum it up beautifully? Some people get it and some people don't - that urge to travel and see foreign lands. Most people I know don`t get it, but every time I see a plane, every time I walk past a travel agent, every time I hear of someone going away I can feel that urge starting in the pit of my stomach. It does not matter what I try to do to settle down, find some stability and do what normal "adults" are supposed to, my desire for travel overrides it on 10 out of 10 occasions. Is it the urge to escape? Is it the desire to see if the grass really is greener on the other side? Perhaps it is a need to experience new cultures and meet new people? Or maybe a little of each. I don`t have the answer, but I sure do know that sometimes I even drive myself mad with it! Please let me know there are other people out there who suffer this same maddness!
| 56 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
Comment by Joanna
The rest of the quote couldn't be better. We are those who long for something new around every corner, those who are never satisfied with the known when the unknown exists, tantalizingly. Why not see the world with new eyes every day?
On a personal note i have done a fair share of journeying and two experiences stand out. I almost died in a third world hospital in a country residing on the very edge of the date line, making it the last country in the earth upon whom the sun sets. Alternatively, I have crossed the date line and stood on the top of a mountain believed to be the first place on that side of the world to catch the rays of the rising sun. This is why we travel, because we can reside on the edge of any world, we can come from sunset to sunrise, near-death to absolute re-birth, and its all just a moment, a dollar, a plane ride away
Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
I agree that we are doing what so many people want to do, we are living so many people`s fantasies, but should we not be counting ourselves (do I dare say it?) "lucky" that we have taken that step and ventured further than those other people to say "YES WE WILL DO WHAT WE CAN TO GO THERE, WE WILL TAKE THAT CHANCE AND SEE THAT"
Perhaps its not even LUCK that we do these things. I watched a show on TV last night where people were travelling with their children and home schooling them just so that they could GET OUT THERE! Would you not want that for your child? or would you prefer your child out there in the streets stabbing the next person or kicking the next person in the face "just because"?