I've been thinking a lot about travel this last week. I mean, dah right? But more than just the vacation that is upon us, but rather why? Why do I travel?
I was reading this blog about in today's world a lot of people travel so they can show their success and show the world how "cool" they are. At first I thought that was kinda weird, but then I thought back to when I first went to TASIS.
By the time I left for TASIS (Jan 1986) I had left all my "good" friends in California 9 months before. This was way before the internet so we didn't keep in touch as easily as you do today. We relied on letters. Random phone calls and gossip. I missed all my friends terribly. As a teenage girl, your friends are your life. And when you're ripped away from them, well, you grow up pretty quickly.
I had one very good friend whom I knew would be a friend for life. We'll call her Nicky (we had a love for Duran Duran back in the day so we both took on names of our favorite band member. She was Nicky and I was Sim-Ey. Weird, I know. We were teenage girls, that's what you do). Ahem, anyhow. When I first moved to Washington, we wrote constantly. I'd get a letter or two every couple of weeks. It was so much fun to get mail. Mom would bring in the mail and hand me something. I'd rip open the envelop and read the letter so fast I didn't even know what it said. Then I'd take a breath. Flushed, I'd read it again...slowly. Taking in every word as if it were the breath that kept me going.
When I moved to TASIS, I knew I'd get fewer letters because it cost more and it took longer. What I didn't expect was to get fewer letters because friends didn't really want to hear what I was doing. I didn't realize they couldn't relate and so didn't care. But we'll get to that.
The TASIS mail was delivered to our dorm rooms while we were in class. My bed was the bed that had the most letters on it in our room. Both sets of roommates (Jr. and Sr. year) used to joke about my letter writing and receiving.
In today's terms, it's the words "You've Got Mail". You open the big creaky, wood door to your 317 year old dorm and there, on top of your bed, are the letters on your bed. You can't tell from the door if there is one or twenty. But I never cared. Just seeing one on the bed was enough for me. Homework could wait. I had a letter to read and to respond to.
I got letters from Mom/Dad, my Grandma Spaid and my Aunt Martha. They were the family members who wrote all the time. Grandma Spaid loved to write letters - and since she was my favorite Grandma, and deaf, I wrote her the most too. Her letters to me were full of the mundane. She walked to the store. She had a doctors appt. She had coffee with a friend. You know? Life stuff. The things we put on FB today.
Aunt Martha wrote funny stories. She embellished her coffee with friends. Or her doctors visit. She wrote like she was preparing to publish her letters in a book. She also always drew something. I got a picture of a teddy bear one time in which she told me what parts of the bear did what. Like the arms were to give me a hugs, that kind of thing. One letter had a photo of a snake with a list of all the things wrong with snakes.
I loved the letters from family. But the letters from my friends held the real interest to me. Full of teenage angst, new boyfriends, dances, band trips, gossip. All the things we'd talk about if we were together. Most my friends wrote with interest in what I was doing. But not Nicky. Her letters started getting shorter and less frequent.
I knew she was a busy girl. She was popular, had dates, the drum major, etc. She had more important things to do but write to me. It hurt, but that's the story I told myself. Then one day I got a letter from her that was 6 pages long. In the letter was all the reasons she no longer wanted to really hear from me. She felt like each letter I wrote telling her about my life at TASIS was bragging. That I was "embellishing" how cool it was to make her jealous. That somehow I needed my life to be better than hers. Truth was, TASIS was really cool. But she didn't understand.
I was blown away. To my teenage mind that wasn't what I was doing at all. Now as an adult, was it? Was I trying to show her I too had a cool life, and friends, and things to do? Was my independence coming out as bragging to push her and others away? Maybe. 17 year old Jenn was just hurt. She wasn't mature enough, or had the experiences, to understand that maybe, just maybe, that's what it was all about. Or that maybe Nicky was jealous. Maybe Nicky wanted all those things and maybe she missed her best friend and the only way to deal with it was to push it away. SOO many outcomes and reasons.
That's always stuck with me though. And with the advent of social media, I think the world expects a little more bragging. There's a little more keeping up with the Joneses (How do you write that anyhow? That doesn't look right.).
When I'm about to embark on a trip I write about it. I post about it. I don't really worry too much if people think I'm bragging. Jenn today doesn't give a rats ass. I post because I'm excited and I want to share that with other people whom I know will be excited too. If someone is jealous or think I'm bragging, they can unfollow me or keep scrolling.
But it's true. I post because I want to share the experience. I want to share the history. I want to just share with people that they too should travel. There's so much to see in the world and so much to learn that I want to entice them into doing the same.
So that's it. I don't post to "brag". I don't post to make anyone jealous. I post because I want you to love travel as much as I do. I want you to be curious about the world out there. I want you to pick a destination and go. Just go. It doesn't have to be exotic. It doesn't have to be expensive. It just has to be a place that calls to you. Pack your bags and experience.
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