Midway upon the journey of our life…

Ann Althouse, as I mentioned yesterday, is an eloquent and witty travel skeptic. Oh, she goes places, and she’s been places, but her travel skepticism: what are you doing when you travel? When you say you value travel? Consider how you’re being manipulated to believe that your value as a person is somehow tied to your identity as a “traveler.”

I agree with her – she writes as she finishes up collating a bunch of travel photos for this post and checks airfare to Spain.

Go to yesterday’s post on the fundamentals – why all human activity should be approached with a skeptical, humble air.

Particularly for a Christian.

Much of the pop spirituality we hear today assures us , pretty much constantly, that we’re okay! We’re doing our best, we’re doing what we can, our lives are fine and our main task is to accept God’s acceptance of us.

Well, of course, that’s not anything like traditional Christian thinking. A daily examen is a fundamental part of the serious spiritual seeker’s life, and Catholic spirituality is all about being willing to change, strip our lives, pare down and let God in – not seeking to baptize, on a daily basis, all of our choices, simply because they are our choices and we kind of sort of are convicted that they must be God’s will because of how they make us feel.

So yeah, bottom line for me? As I get ready to share some thoughts on how travel has helped me grow as a person, I am very willing to accept the possibility and perhaps even probability that this is all self-indulgent nonsense, that I could have learned all of this simply from walking around my own neighborhood, getting to know my neighbors better and spending all of that time and money in my own community.

There is absolutely no necessity in this interest of mine, and if the experiences have

Guatemala

helped me in any way – great. But I probably could have grown in these same ways – if it’s God’s will – by living a less privileged lifestyle. Particularly since Catholic spiritual tradition teaches us – from the Gospels on – that the core of conforming to Christ is sacrificial love. Anything else is either distraction or decoration.

No, we don’t want to be scrupulous. Got it. But you know what? That swinging pendulum away from neurotic scrupulosity might just carry a person to the point of no self-examination at all, and that’s not great either.

And what does that have to do with travel? Simply that even as I write about how travel has benefited me (I think), I’m not presenting it as an absolute, as an ideology, as a necessity if living a life of compassion, openness, wisdom and even, yes – adventure – is what you’re about.

So. What have I learned?

• My (our) way isn’t the only way. Even as much as globalism has flattened many cultural differences – they’re still there. Businesses in many parts of Europe still shut down much of the afternoon, communities in those places still spill out on the streets for the paseo in the late afternoon and early evening, dinner doesn’t get going until the time most Americans are settling down for bed. And those are minor differences, aren’t they?

It’s been so valuable for me to learn this and be regularly reminded of it – as it has for my kids (remember my speech yesterday about the bubbles young people live in and how travel can help burst those bubbles).

When we were in Sicily, I had a long conversation with Sylvia, the owner of an agriturismo, about this (this one).  She allowed as how the weird business hours annoyed and inconvenienced her at times. I said that it would take a real adjustment for me to live in a culture in which, if I ran out of milk at 10pm, there was absolutely no where around to go get it. “But,” I continued, “There’s a price for that – the person who’s got to be working that late, away from home.” Sylvia shrugged away my cultural over-sensitivity. “Well, at least they have a job,” she said.

Sicily and Barcelona

Everything involves a trade-off, and heaven doesn’t exist on earth.

And societies and cultures function just fine doing things in non-American ways, thanks very much.

• Exposure to other cultures. We’ve not ventured all over the globe, by any means, but even our limited travels have taught us much about the realities of life in other places. You can eat at a Japanese restaurant here, but it’s not like being in the middle of Osaka or Kyoto. People say all sorts of things about Mexico and Central America, but actually go there – and what will you find? I don’t know what you will find, but what I found was what I find everywhere: people are the same, even as people are so different. There are certain things I wouldn’t do in those places – drive alone in a rural area at night, for example. Yeah. But then, I don’t think I’m up for driving alone at night in rural areas of Alabama these days, either.

One of my favorite photos – two of my kids and two of Dorian Speed’s kids at the Renoir museum in Paris. It looks like Four Genius Kids Contemplating The Burghers of Calais, but who knows what they were actually talking about. 

• For people – especially kids – who grow up in the suburbs, exposure to public transportation – either in cities like NYC or Chicago – or overseas – is a revelation.
• As is the lifestyle in medium to small-scale communities outside the United States: a lifestyle of freedom and walking, accessibility and palpable community that is rare for us anymore, unfortunately.
• For us, seeing Catholicism lived in public ways has been eye-opening: from religious paintings on Bavarian buildings to roadside chapels everywhere in Sicily, to public processions in Mexico.

• Learning history in the places where it happened. There is really nothing like it, even if that history happened in your own community – there is so much value in walking those same paths, in  – instead of just whizzing by – actually getting out of the car and reading  the many, many “Trail of Tears” historic markers that dot the Southeast and considering what that was and what it means, even today for native peoples.

Lewis & Clark & Hank Williams

• Appreciation of the smaller puzzle pieces and the passion of the local enthusiast. Our world is peppered with small museums and historic sites that mark events and people who never made it into the big history books, but whose lives, achievements and even crimes make up the warp and weave of the past – and therefore the present, as well. As a generalist with a poor memory and worse attention span, I so appreciate those who give their time and energy to maintain these spots in our landscape that don’t allow us to forget.
• How ordinary people live – We don’t do resorts, or all-inclusives. We mostly stay in apartments. I love grocery shopping on foreign countries. We often end up in spots as the only non-local. I just like to be reminded , over and over – my way is not the only way, people live differently – but people are all the same. 

Saturnia, Italy, Osaka, Japana, Bologna

• Political awareness – in an time in which it’s so hard to get the truth from the media, traveling can help. Take borders: hot topic, right? Have you tried to cross an international border over the past twenty years? Have you ever traveled to Mexico or Central America? And back? Doing so gives a bit of perspective – just a bit – on the current conversation.

Colorado, Zion National Park, NYC, Somehwere in Alabama, New Orleans

• The United States is pretty good.  I am not super patriotic and am mostly a cynic about everything, but traveling around the country and abroad has actually deepened my affection for this country and my appreciation of its uniqueness. First of all – it’s gorgeous, and okay, we are who we are, landwise, because of past injustices, but that’s a whole other philosophical conversation. This is the present, and it’s an awesome, beautiful country. Secondly, one of the feelings I have upon returning to the US after a trip abroad is always a sense of relief, and it’s more than relief at just being back home in the familiar – although that’s a big part of it. It’s a relief and a welcoming of two particular aspects of American life:

1. The authentic and real – and, despite current social tensions – mostly effortless diversity. We are a unique country in that respect, and you really don’t understand it until you go to a European country and think, “Wait. I haven’t seen a non-white person in two weeks. That’s pretty weird.”  Or you experience life in somewhere like Guatemala or a smaller city in Italy and have a sense of its cultural cohesiveness which is great in one respect, but limiting in another. Again, it’s a trade-off, isn’t it?

(The closest approximation, in my limited experience has been London. London in many respects – even aside from language – was a very American-like experience. Diverse, everything open all the time, no scary rules about When To Eat and so on.)

1. The flexibility and openness – again, there’s a price to pay for that. We’re always going, we don’t rest, someone’s always got to be tending the store – and perhaps I shouldn’t like that, but guess what? I do.

Orvieto, Charleston, Montpelier, Guatemala, Monterey (CA), Zugspitze (Bavaria)

That’s just a bit. More generally though, I think travel has taught us:

Flexibility. You can have a plan for your life, but hah. 

Openness: You knew what you thought you were going to see – but what you actually saw and experienced was nothing like you anticipated. It was better.

Courage:  You think you could never do that thing, that’s a bridge too far, it’s beyond you – and then before you know it, there you are, doing that thing. And it’s more than fine – it’s great.

Humility: You think you understand things, life and the world, but then you go to this new place and you always learn something new. Maybe you hardly know anything at all, and maybe that’s wisdom worth carrying about on a daily basis.

People are amazing and interesting, different and all the same.  They just are.

Basically, it all comes down to this: it’s good for me to get out of the house. Down the street, next door, across town, across the globe. I just always need to be very aware and willing to engage in self-criticism: am I journeying towards something  – or running away? 

Because here’s the thing:

When we spent those three months in Europe in the fall of 2012, it was a test run. I had the resources to move, and I had it in my head that this would be a very me lifestyle – let’s live the ex-pat life abroad! I looked into schools in various places – Turin was a focus, as I recall, for some reason.

But then…

After being over there for a couple of months, enjoying it and not really tiring of it, I realized: Hey. These are American kids. Sure I could haul them over here and indulge this fantasy and they’d be fine and would probably flourish in  some ways…but this is not what they want. They’re okay, but they are looking forward to being back ….home.  Admit it. This isn’t what they need now – to live out what you fancy is your dream. Get real. 

I’ll close this already overlong entry with some wisdom from Harriet Martineau, the 19th century British writer and traveler who spent a couple of years in the United States and wrote about it in two books – the delightful Retrospect on Western Travel and Society in America. Take a look at them both.  For other entries on Martineau see here and here.)

What is gained by living and travelling?

One of the most striking and even amusing results is the perception of the transient nature of troubles. The thoughtful traveller feels something like wonder and amusement at himself for being so depressed by evils as he finds himself in the midst of long-idealized objects. He is surprised at his own sufferings from hunger, cold, heat, and weariness; and at his being only prevented by shame from passing some great object unseen, if he has to rouse himself from sleep to look at it, or to forego a meal for its sake. The next time he is refreshed, he wonders how his troubles could ever so affect him; and, when at home, he looks through the picture-gallery of his memory, the afflictions of past hours would have vanished, their very occurrence would be denied but for the record in the journal. The contemptible entries about cold, hunger, and sleepiness stand, ludicrously enough, among notices of cataracts and mountains, and of moral conflicts in the senates of nations. And so with life.

We look back upon our pangs about objects of desire, as if it were the object and not the temper of pursuit which was of importance. We look back on our sufferings from disease, from disappointment, from suspense, in times when the great moral events of our lives, or even of the age, were impending, and we disregarded them. We were mourning over some petty loss or injury while a new region of the moral universe was about to be disclosed to us; or fretting about our “roast chicken and our little game at cards,” while the liberties of an empire were being lost or won.

Worse than our own little troubles, probably, has been the fear and sorrow of hurting others. One of the greatest of a traveller’s hardships is the being aware that he must be perpetually treading on somebody’s toes. Passing from city to city, from one group of families to another, where the divisions of party and of sect, the contrariety of interests, and the world of domestic circumstance are all unknown to him, he can hardly open his lips without wounding somebody; and it makes him all the more anxious if, through the generosity of his entertainers, he never hears of it. No care of his own can save him from his function of torturer. He cannot speak of religion, morals, and politics; he cannot speak of insanity, intemperance, or gaming, or even of health, riches, fair fame, and good children, without danger of rousing feelings of personal remorse or family shame in some, or the bitter sense of bereavement in others. Little or nothing has been said of this as one of the woes of travelling; but, in my own opinion, this is the direction in which the fortitude of the traveller is the most severely tried.

Yet, in the retrospect, it seems even good that we should have been obliged thus to call the generosity and forbearance of our hosts into exercise. They are, doubtless, benefited by the effort; and we may perhaps be gainers, the direct operation of forbearance and forgiveness being to enhance affection. The regard of those whom we have wounded may perhaps be warmer than if we had never hurt them. It is much the same with men’s mutual inflictions in life. None of us, especially none who are frank and honest, can speak what we think, and act according to what we believe, without giving pain in many directions. It is very painful, but quite unavoidable. In the retrospect, however, we are able to smile on the necessity, and to conclude that, as we have been willing to bear our share of the wounding from others, and should, perhaps, have been sorry if it had not happened, it is probable that others may have regarded us and our inflictions in the same way.

Nothing is more conspicuous in the traveller’s retrospect than the fact how little external possession has to do with happiness. As he wanders back over city and village, plantation and prairie, he sees again care on the brow of the merchant and mirth in the eyes of the labourer; the soulless faces of the rich Shakers rise up before him, side by side with the gladsome countenance of the ruined abolitionist. Each class kindly pities the one below it in power and wealth; the traveller pities none but those who are wasting their energies in the exclusive pursuit of either. Generally speaking, they have all an equal endowment of the things from which happiness is really derived. They have, in pretty equal distribution, health, senses, and their pleasures, homes, children, pursuits, and successes. With all these things in common, the one point of difference in their respective amounts of possession of more than they can at present eat, use, and enjoy, seems to him quite unworthy of all the compassion excited by it; though the compassion, having something amiable in it, is of a kindly use as far as it goes.

In a cemetery, the thoughtless are startled into the same perception. How destitute are the dead in their graves! How naked is the spirit gone from its warm housings and environs of luxuries! This is the first thought. The next is, was it ever otherwise? Had these luxuries ever anything to do with the peace of the spirit, except as affording a pursuit for the employment of its energies? Is not as vigorous and gladsome a mind to be found abroad in the fields, or singing at the mill, as doing the honours of the drawing-room? and, if it were not so, what words could we find strong enough for the cruelty of the decree under which every human being is compelled to enter his grave solitary and destitute?

In the retrospect of the recent traveller in America, the happiest class is clearly that small one of the original abolitionists; men and women wholly devoted to a lofty pursuit, and surrendering for it much that others most prize: and, in the retrospect of the traveller through life, the most eminently blessed come forth from among all ranks and orders of men, some being rich and others poor; some illustrious and others obscure; but all having one point of resemblance, that they have not staked their peace on anything so unreal as money or fame.

As for the worth of praise, a traveller cannot have gone far without finding it out. He has been praised and blamed at every turn; and he soon sees that what people think of him matters to themselves and not to him. He applies this to himself, and finds confirmation. It is ludicrous to suppose that what he thinks of this man and that, whose motives and circumstances he can never completely understand, should be of lasting importance to the subjects of his observation, while he feels it to be very important to his own peace and state of temper that he should admire as much and despise as little as reason will allow.

That this is not more felt and acted upon is owing to the confined intercourses of the majority of men. If, like the traveller, they were for a long time exposed to a contrariety of opinions respecting themselves, they would arrive at the conviction which rises “by natural exhalation” from the field of graves, that men’s mutual judgments are almost insignificant to the objects of them, while immeasurably important to those who form them. 

…. The mysterious pain of partings presses upon the returned traveller and the surviver with nearly equal force. I do not know whether this woe is usually taken into the estimate of travellers when they are counting the cost of their scheme before setting out; but I know that it deserves to be. I believe that many would not go if they could anticipate the misery of such partings as those which must be encountered in a foreign country, in long dreary succession, and without more hope than in parting with the dying. The chances of meeting again are small. For a time grief sooths itself by correspondence; but this cannot last, as one family group after another opens its arms to the stranger, and gives him a home only that he must vacate it for another. The correspondence slackens, fails, and the parties are to one another as if they were dead, with the sad difference that there is somewhat less faith in each other than if they were in circumstances in which it is physically impossible that they could communicate. To the surviver of intercourse, in either place of meditation, there remains the heartsoreness from the anguish of parting; that pain which, like physical pain, takes us by surprise with its bitterness at each return, and disposes us, at length, to either cowardice or recklessness; and each of these survivers may be conscious of some visitations of jealousy, jealousy lest the absent should be learning to forget the past in new interests and connexions.

The strongest point of resemblance in the two contemplations of the life which lies behind, is this; that a scene is closed and another is opening. The term of existence in a foreign land, and the somewhat longer term spent on this planetary island, are viewed as over; and the fatigues, enjoyments, and perplexities of each result in an amount of calm experience. The dead, it is hoped, are entering on a new region, in which they are to act with fresh powers and a wiser activity. The refreshed traveller has the same ambition. I have surveyed my experience, and told my tale; and, though often visiting America in thought, can act no more with reference to my sojourn there, but must pass over into a new department of inquiry and endeavour. Friendships are the grand gain of travel over a continent or through life; and these may be carried forward into new regions of existence here, as we hope they may be into the unexplored hereafter, to give strength and delight to new exertions, and to unite the various scenes of our being by the strongest ties we know.