Traveling is Not an Apotheosis

Drying laundry in the back yard
in Birmingham, UK.

Traveling is not an apotheosis. You do not land in another country and transform into a god. You arrive and remain fully human, having to do the same tasks you do at home—wash dishes, laundry, food shop. Your body has the same needs and limitations—sleep, food, shower, warmth, rest. You still contain all your ugly, hindering emotions—frustration, embarrassment, fear, loneliness, anxiety, apathy, exhaustion.

If we did not have this humanness, then traveling would be a lot easier and a hell of a lot cheaper. There would be no need to pay for hostels or food, allowing more money for another museum, site, club, performance, train. You could adventure 24-7, seeing what that city, desert, countryside looks and smells and sounds like at every hour of the day, never missing a sunrise, because you would have no need for sleep. You could walk across continents, never carried by motor or wing, learning the rise and life and bend of the land, because you would not know weariness or pain.

So many times while traveling I wished that I did not need to eat or sleep. I wished my body did not need wash or rest. I wished I never felt afraid, lonely, or frustrated. I wished I knew what 5am and sunrise looked like in every country I visited. But I did need those things. I did feel those emotions, and I didn’t see 5am or sunrise in every country I visited.

Because I am human, and traveling is not an apotheosis.

But when everything is alien, there is comfort in washing a dish, in folding a shirt. These small tasks and routines give us something familiar and tangible to hold onto. They allow us to know that even if we don’t know the person next to us or the language or the food, at least we know how to do these simple tasks, that at least, at its most basic level, we know how to take care of ourselves; and if we can do that, then we’ll be okay. (And sleep, as much as I have loathed you and cheated on you, at least you’re reliable.) If anything, these needs and emotions, as inconvenient and expensive as they may be, ground us, connect us, letting us know that life is very much the same wherever we go.

Eating sauerkraut in Berlin, Germany.