Travel Maketh the Man?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 – 17:56The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams. — Oprah Winfrey
I spend many hours during my pre-teenage days flicking through atlases and reading any copy of National Geographic I could lay my hands on, imaging faraway places and adventures on foreign shores. The fact that I happened to be living in the Seychelles during this period meant it was not a foreign shore to me. My ambition was to become a sailor in the Royal Navy whose ships occasionally graced the islands’ shores and whose officers graced my mother’s guest house whilst on shore leave.
Time passed and we moved to Zimbabwe where, thanks to my job after I left school, I got to travel extensively throughout the country; a thing many people do not get to do in their own countries. We were not obliged to stay in hotels (in many cases there were no hotels) so we roughed it. I loved that part of my work but it all finally came to a halt with promotion.
“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman
Fast forward some years and I am a married man and father of one living in England. Here, I come to realise that many people take some sort of holiday every year, in some cases, two holidays a year, many times involving travel to foreign parts. I never seem to have the finance to do that and for years, my holidays were spent fixing up the house or the garden.
What I came to realise about many of those who did go on holiday is that fact that they rarely got to know the countries they visited. Many went to Spain and spoke no Spanish or knew anything outside the holiday area the visited, the Alps attract thousands of English people and many can’t tell you anything about the local towns near the ski resorts. Many have been to exotic locations like the Caribbean and not even left the resort!
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
Eventually I could manage and with a much larger family, took a holiday in Wales. We did it again the following year. On the second visit, we left the resort and went to explore the major towns of Cardiff and Swansea on day trips. Some years later we went to France and despite my initial reservations, I find I actually like France and its people. My two eldest children then went to New York, I did Brazil and my two youngest accompanied their mother to Zimbabwe.
If anything, Brazil was the catalyst for me. It no doubt played a part in my decision to leave work and do something new which led to Mixed In Different Shades project being born. Planning and writing for the project awakened the dream of travelling and seeing the world and it led to the realisation that I wanted more from life than what the future held then. The state of our marriage and my wife’s vision of her own future meant that we came to the realisation that we were both unlikely to achieve any form of long term happiness together and we agreed amicably to go separate ways; so much better than spending the rest of our lives resenting, with its negative impact on families, each other.
So here I am on the 1st of March, 2011. So far, there have been various reasons for why I have delayed stepping onto the plane, reasons that are starting to look like excuses and I do realise that I am apprehensive. This month, I will take that first step.
“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
This trip will not be one of comfortable hotel rooms and plush local foods – these comforts tend not only to make travelling expensive but they remove from the very people you travel to meet – so maybe a better description of what I am about to do is vagabonding. Vagabonding requires stepping out your comfort zone, embracing experiences as they come along; a way to connect to the planet and its people and a way to find out who you really are.
May you find the balance.
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