Travel: the life-long campaign against banality

There’s something unsettling about travel.  You’ve escaped your comfortable life back home only to become a stranger in a strange land.  It’s a vulnerable position to be in, and yet we do it repeatedly.

There’s packing; invasive and often intimidating security/immigration; ass-numbing long-haul flights with dodgy in-flight meals; over-priced accommodation; sun-cream; mosquitoes; and more…

So why do we do it?  Why do we travel to put ourselves through this stress, and call it a “holiday”?  I’ve been asking why I’m driven to leave here, just to be somewhere else.  The answers are very revealing.

Travel is the great escape

Travel agents and advertisers will often throw in the term “escape” when it comes to holidays.  And for good reason – normal life is crap!  At least, that’s what we tell ourselves, and it’s conveniently reinforced for us everywhere we look.

We’re constantly reminded through advertising that what we have isn’t good enough, unless we bought it tomorrow. (<- that’s not a grammatical error).

• See that phone you have?  It’s crap now.  Get this new one – it allows you to make phone calls 3x faster than any other.
• See that computer you have already… does it have the dual-quad-bumper-core with 19x mega-juicy-cache?  No?  Then it’s crap.  Upgrade quick before this amazing special offer ends.
• See your house?  I know you’re already mortgaged to the hilt, but why don’t you sell it and get a bigger one?  Don’t worry, assuming you can keep your job, you’ll be finished paying it back when you’re 113 years old.  Bargain!  House prices always rise anyway so you’ll be fine.

If we’re getting paid just enough to live on and put away some savings, while working for most of our waking hours, then a holiday every 6 months or so is amazing!

It’s the ultimate distraction.  Consider how much time you actually spend on the holiday.  There’s…

• the time to discuss and decide on where you’re going;
• the time to find and book it;
• the time prepare for it;
• the holiday itself;
• the post-mortem: discussing about how wonderful it was and how “you need a holiday now to recover” (do people still say that?); processing the photos, putting them in the photo albums, showing your friends, uploading them onto Facebook and fielding the inevitable stream of comments.

Hurrah for holidays.  Where would we be without them?  Bored out of our skulls!

Life = Boredom + Holidays?

So is that what life is?

For many of us, yes it is.  And for most of our adult lives.

The difference is when you actually feel passionately about the life you lead and the job you do.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re employee or employer.  The bottom line here is: are you happy with what you’re doing?

Better yet, are you passionate about it?

So travel as a means of escape: this is certainly true, at least in-part, for me.  I’m still trying to escape the responsibilities of adult life and have been probably since I was 23 – there’s taxes, student loans, buying a house, commitment, to name but a few.  Perpetual travel allows me to banish these niggling issues while I’m preoccupied with whatever journey I’m on.

It’s bliss, for a time; carefree and off the hook; the good life.  But I know when the merry-go-round stops, I must eventually face up to all that has to be done.

So I book another flight…

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying I need to give up the travelling or any of the things I love to do altogether.  But to continue into the future doing all these things I enjoy, I must prepare by doing the necessary tasks.  However long it takes.

Bummer.

And here’s the real kicker…

Boredom + travel + … = your life

Defining all these necessary things to do as “tasks” and “chores” that must be done before the good life truly begins is the biggest self-trickery of them all.  Because this is life.

Life is only banal because we say it so; we allow it so; we live it so.

If you’re bored, and holidays are your escape for a couple of weeks, then ask yourself, what exactly are you escaping from?  In case you’re practicing your speed reading skills, I’ll ask it again:

What exactly are you escaping from?

If your answer is your everyday life, then you’ve got some tough realisations to make.

Change it, make it interesting by becoming interested; explore your creative side by being creative; and rediscover what you’re passionate about by… you guessed it, being passionate about something.

Take an active role and eject the autopilot.

There’s much more to say

There’s heaps more I can say about travel, but this article is long enough for now.  Of course, there is much more to travel than escapism, but for most of us, it’s a significant factor if we’re really honest with ourselves.

I’d be interested to know what you think.  Why do you travel?  What do you do on your travels that excites you, and why do you choose a particular holiday location over any other.  When you find a place you visit beautiful, why do you find it so?  What does the holiday have that “normal life” doesn’t have?  And what can you do to bring some of your travels home with you (and I don’t mean fridge magnets and Aboriginal boomerang ornaments)?

Tagged as: banality, boredom, escape, goals, happiness, passions, travel