What is traveling and what is its purpose?
A few favorite accompanying images by me, Hunter Bliss
I am going to propose to you that traveling as we have come to know it is useless. You don't have to be a seasoned explorer to realize this, either. After only my second language I began to see huge gaps in the experiences shared by tourists everywhere. Two years into my third language and culture of a third continent, I am no longer smiling as I speak.
I can't yet make a conclusion about the value of traveling, but it no longer seems to represent the expansion of any intellectual horizons or the acceptance of other cultures. Traveling, as it has been popularized by society at large, is more like watching a movie in a theater. There is no exchange between you and the film- you are there to watch, free to go home afterwards and discuss what you saw with your friends. It could even be a dramatic film which gives you a new impression of a problem you never realize existed. But at no point does the problem actually become yours, and the time you spent watching the movie was too short to actually understand the context in which the film took place.
In this regard, I ask the question: What is traveling? Depending on the perspective, the answer might vary. It seems valid to me that people want to witness the beauty of being in a foreign world. After the last 4.5 years in Germany and soon to be in China, I can't help but skeptically view myself on vacation and passing travelers, knowing they unconsciously are unwilling to navigate the implications of identifying with another people. To learn a language and construct a life for oneself in a new culture is measured on a completely different scale of significance. In the process of the latter, one is confronted with as many heart-wrenching hardships as beautiful opportunities. There is no home to which one can return and make a comparison from a familiar perspective. The entire identity of oneself is revised and meditated anew with new structures of mind informed by a new grammar and vocabulary. One becomes fundamentally and irreversibly a new person, forever only able to look backward from afar at the person one once was. Past friends fade away into uninteresting Facebook feeds and family exists in irregular text messages. The expectation of staying abroad forces one to painfully acknowledge the nonexistence of the self and open up to a new flow of information that permeates every aspect of life. Some travelers can cope with these processes better than others, but I am thankful for my particular sensitivity when I contemplate the matter.
I don't want to sound like I am holding this definition of travel over peoples' heads. I myself am guilty of taking advantage of the hospitality of foreign lands. I find it relaxing and beautiful to spend pleasant weeks and months exploring places where I am always met with smiles, gorgeous sights, and great food. And when not those things, I still find it pleasant to occupy my mind with the problems of foreign countries for as long as my vacation allows. But the real change- the change people seem too uncomfortable to permit- is the change one finds after integrating into a new culture and never going back. I wish I could go home and communicate this kind of message with my family just by looking into their eyes, but I can't. These feelings make me seem cold and unforgiving in the eyes of my home folk. They are unbreakably confined by time, experience, and language.
I'm going to end here as it is quite late and I should be sleeping, but I hope I could convey a piece of my perspective to you. This issue chronically reoccurs in my life, and has done so ever since moving here to Germany. I hope I can continue explaining in later posts. In doing so, maybe I can establish a mutual understanding and genuine respect for the people of other cultures.
First, I apologize if I've misinterpreted your message here. You may be selling vacation travel to other countries a little short. I can only speak for my own travels over many years, but each trip to a different region (even within the U.S.) has given me a renewed appreciation for life. Many of these trips have also dispelled my previously held beliefs about a particular country or culture. I find value in those experiences. You shouldn't think less of those who don't take up a new life in a different culture. Life has many paths and every path isn't appropriate for every person.
I don't think you did, and I tried to accommodate for this response as well. There are two sides to this spectrum. On one side, you feel you appreciate life more and find value in that. That is maybe a bit of a flimsy matter, as the motivation behind your appreciation might be unclear. It's easy to appreciate your life by depreciating the lives of others. In other ways, I think this form of travel has more entertainment and interest value than cultural value, but value nonetheless. Just look around you on the internet of show-and-tell travel or in your own country during tourist season: What is left over after 10 years other than maybe a neat story and some pictures? Especially if it was a pleasant vacation, the memories fade within a year and before you know it you are readjusted to your comfortable life again. The value of this kind of travel is, like I say, entertainment and interest, not cultural awareness.
On the other side of the spectrum, I meet countless travelers in a culture as relatively simple (if they are Western) as Germany's who come here thinking they are expanding their minds but in reality fail to make the first efforts at interacting with locals. To them, travel is like some sort of collectable object to put on display like a trophy back home. This pattern is particularly strong among English speakers who expect and unknowingly force people to speak English with them. These people confuse the enthusiasm and friendliness of accommodating locals with genuine emotions. I have met more people than I can count who have come here for even a year without learning a single word of the language. This is one of the reasons it's difficult to emphasize the difference in experience when one spends long terms in other countries, with increasing difficulty as the term length and interaction depth increases. My reason in writing this was to articulate the vastness of the space between the two worlds. I can see how it be interpreted as me looking down at those who don't travel like this, but that's not the intention. I am packaging my information with the same reality that has repeatedly broken my heart as a foreigner, and trying to establish a necessary respect for other cultures for which we can skip the treatment as if we were external to them. I don't expect others to leave their homes for more difficult lives, but I do hope they are able see themselves less as the other and more as people. If you have other points where I could be more clear, I am confident you will find my intentions are good even if your instictive reaction is uncomfortable. :)