I do a job that makes me travel often. How many times did I hear « you are so lucky to travel for your job ». I usually answer “yes”, and sometimes “no”. On that December 1st, I would have rather answered “no”. The automatic check-in machine had just assigned me the seat 25 C (out of 26 rows). It was 4.30 pm and the flight was supposed to leave at 5.15 pm from Madrid to arrive in Frankfurt two hours later. Frankfurt was experiencing a heavy snowstorm, and it’s finally with a two hours delay that we left Barajas airport. Here I am, at the very rear of the Boeing 737, with my suitcase under my feet (there was of course no space left on the over head compartments), squeezed for the coming two hours. At that very moment, I hate to travel.
It takes ages to reach the runway and to kill time, I distractedly go through the Lufthansa magazine. These airlines magazine follow the same structure and do not reveal any surprises to the readers. An opening article about the airline, a businessman interview, the latest hot spots in the main big cities, a featured article on a touristic destination, and luxury goods advertising. But this time, I came across an interview of Alain de Botton, titled: « Travel frees you to re-imagine yourself » . It draw my attention for three reasons: first, because I had the chance to listen to the philosopher Alain de Botton just one year before at a conference in London, and his views on the evolution of the society were particularly interesting ; second, because at that very moment I would have so much loved to escape from this trip and re-imagine myself at home ; and thirdly, because travel has always been part of my life; I always loved to travel, I travel for my job, and I work for the travel industry.
I started reading:
LH : Mr de Botton, do you ever get itchy feet?
AdB : I do. I look at the planes that fly overhead and I want to be on them. I think all of us have this nomadic side.
Well, that’s a good start; It is quite true. The human being is a nomad that has always been eager to discover the world and push his boundaries. And it keeps going. It becomes more and more easy to travel and it’s like if the entire world was within our reach. It’s now also easy to travel virtually. In just one click, I can visit any place on earth as if I was there. I can see from any angle the places I will visit. With Google Street, I walk on any street of any city in the world. It is fascinating and sad at the same time, because in some way, we loose the real feeling of surprise and discovery. Nevertheless, it remains a source of inspiration and an invitation to travel.
I kept reading with interest:
AdB : But what travel is really about is discovering where you should go from a psychological point of view. People should analyze why they want to travel and what the world can offer hem.
LH : How can a person do this?
AdB : Airlines and travel agencies are sending people around the world. At a deeper level they are connecting people with their dreams and hopes. I would like to be offered a therapy service prior to booking a ticket and have the chance to talk to a therapeutically trained agent about why I want to ravel to a particular place.
LH : What ? go to a travel agency to get a therapy ? Not everybody would accept that. What can we do ourselves ?
AdB : We can analyze why we want to travel and what our expectations are. The Christians pilgrims had very High expectations when they went on a journey: They thought it would change their life. And Goethe very much believed that traveling could change him as a human being. I think we need to have a little bit of that ambition.
I stopped reading for a moment, captivated by what I read and started thinking about my travels, my motivations and objectives when I travel. Maybe there were different periods in my life and my travels at the time reflected them. For example, when I was a teen or young adult, I wanted to visit places that stroke my imagination. But deeper inside me, there was certainly a desire to become an independent person, to leave the family comfort zone, to hit the road and discover a new world far away from a well organized and protected life, the desire to see beyond my personal frontiers. When I was 17, I took a summer job to buy me a ticket to New York. My grandmother activated the family network and it’s with great kindness that my cousins Aviva and Heri welcomed me in their apartment in the Queens. I will be grateful to them forever. They had been recently going through the travel of their life. They had left Romania for a free world and opened me their door so I could make my young adult initiatory travel. Thank you. But beyond the discovery of New York which completely fascinated me, and most probably through their journey, today I understand that I had also found out that travel can have a profound objective and that it is the driving force for our evolution, for our life.
I resumed my reading:
AdB : overcoming fantasies about travel, trying to be imaginative and break away from clichés. Travel is full of them. The sunny beaches of X, the beautiful mountains of Y. It’s always suggested that certain destinations are good and that others do not even qualify as designations. It’s very normal for example to go to New York ; it’s not very normal to go to Kansas. But maybe Kansas is actually better for you. Perhaps it suits you more. Imagine you are someone who is anxious about the future, who worries what tomorrow will bring in your personal life, in your job.
You should take a look at the Sinai desert. Perhaps all that eternity and vastness will free you from some of your day to day apprehensions. The trick is to find places which maybe answer to an inner need but are not necessarily on the tourist map. We need a goal when we travel. More of a goal than relaxing on a beach. You often need a journey to become a new person because things are different elsewhere and new rules apply. A journey is an invitation to change certain parts of your own life. It frees you to re-imagine yourself.
Oh !….I’m suddenly very interested. Wasn’t I myself in the Sinaï desert ten months ago ? Didn’t I go during that same trip to Israel to meet my roots, at a precise time in my life when the questioning and the connection with my origins appeared to me as a mandatory step and the key to my construction and my evolution?
Yes, I do understand what de Botton says. I had a profound objective and not only this journey was an essential element of the answer, but it would become also the starting point, a step towards other journeys that will address the same objective.
Indeed, one should not underestimate journeys with a leisure purpose. I enjoy beaches, I appreciate to be filled with a scenic landscape, I like cities, in particular the ones with a bay like San Francisco, Nice, Rio, Hong Kong, Sydney; I like this contrast between the city and the sea as if the sea was an invite to a journey beyound the urbanity. But when I look back, I often gave preference to journeys allowing the discovery of different cultures that I felt close to, such as South America. For others, it might be China, India, Africa. One will find a history, a way of life, a religion, a philosophy, rituals which will reveal or feed a personal journey and will transform more or less our own personality, while leaving stamps and enlarging inner frontiers. Each journey will raise questions and generate thoughts that will make us look at the world differently and therefore will make us evolve and change.
LH : Why do people get this urge to travel in the first place ?
AdB : Because we aren’t just minds ? We are bodies, with senses as well. We feel the air, the wind we smell things and we want to experience things physically with our bodies rather than just read about them.
Our senses need to be activated, awakened and shaken. And above all, we rather usually keep our sensorial memories from our travels. The smell of the spices market in Istanbul, the noise of the birds in the bird market in Hong Kong, the taste of the ‘pasteis de nata’ in Lisbon, the flavor and texture of the mango sticky rice in that little restaurant in Bangkok, the breeze blowing in the palm trees at night on a tropical beach, the ultra fine texture of the sand under your feet, the magic of a sun rise at the Grand Canyon… Let yourself go, and you will feel all your travel memories through your senses. Travel is also about that.
LH : What changes do you see coming in the way we travel ?
AdB : Travelling will become more expensive. People will travel less but will take their journey more seriously and try to connect the psychology to the destination. I hope to see travel agencies that offer a psychotherapeutic service. And that the hotel industry will expand the idea of what makes people happy. Everything is so dedicated to the body, good food, a comfortable bed, a mud bath, a pedicure. The idea of wellness is to narrow, it should include things that are psychologically enriching. We need people with a more creative approach to travel, toward a more complete experience of travel.
When I closed the magazine, the plane had taken off since a few minutes. I thought about what I had just read. I’ve been travelling so much but never read something that interesting about travelling. I took my i-Pod, looked for the song I wanted to listen to at this moment and started reading again the interview. The song began… here are the lyrics :
J'aimerais tant voir Syracuse
L'île de Pâques et Kairouan
Et les grands oiseaux qui s'amusent
A glisser l'aile sous le vent
Voir les jardins de Babylone
Et le palais du grand Lama
Rêver des amants de Vérone
Au sommet du Fuji-Yama
Voir le pays du matin calme
Aller pêcher au cormoran
Et m'enivrer de vin de palme
En écoutant chanter le vent
Avant que ma jeunesse s'use
Et que mes printemps soient partis
J'aimerais tant voir Syracuse
Pour m'en souvenir à Paris
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