I NEED to travel. The urge is so substantial that I don't even like to call it travel, because that makes it sound like something frivolous and of privilege. For me, it is a matter of survival and sanity. I have ignored house hold repairs, put off medical procedures, even delayed getting a puppy (doesn't sound like me does it!?) to ensure I can buy a plane ticket. I doubt it will get me on the next season of the show sharing its name with my post, but considering its abrupt beginnings and unexpected effects I do think it should qualify. I cannot remember ever having the desire or need for something as much as this addiction, and I cannot think of anything that has brought me such satisfaction and fulfillment. I have known love, comfort, happiness, excitement, and surprise. I have experienced the deep emotions evoked by sympathy, betrayal, abandonment, rejection, and anguish. But never have I felt all of those things at once; traveling does that to me.
There have been things that made me cry. Yes, literally. Seeing, and I mean really seeing, not just looking with your eyes (I understand now what they're talking about in Avatar), the towering columns of the Parthenon; touching the stone and walking over underground corridors that have been touched and walked over for thousands of years in the Colosseum; standing in castle-esque forts overlooking the ocean once manned by a king's army (dark dungeons with men's last words carved into the walls included)...these are the things of my addiction. But it is not just the monuments, not just the idea of being there, it's the reaffirmation to me that we are just one world.
There may be borders drawn on maps, taxation, embargoes, and a plethora of other man-made ideas used to separate themselves from others to gain power, freedom, money, etc., but in reality we cannot be separated. We have given ourselves certain identities to be a part of one team or another; a nationality, a name, a number, certain characteristics, a placement in the Olympics and ranks on various WHO publications. But we are all one. I have heard languages spoken in "biblical" times, nearly unchanged, long before the thought of an America or the idea of English. I have smelled and tasted food that has been grown and produced thousands of years before exportation and outsourcing. I have heard music that was being played before automatic weapons and party politics. Our history intertwines us as much as our present.
There is no difference in a hungry American child, and a hungry African child. Children are children, and being hungry feels the same no matter where you are. A raped American woman is the same as a raped Somalian woman. Women are women, and wrong is wrong no matter what your political status is. Poverty, wrongful imprisonment, disease, and oppression are not acceptable no matter what borders are crossed, people are people. One country's survival and success greatly depends on the others', we live in a global economy. One person's survival and success greatly depends on the others', we live on one Earth.
This is why I need to travel. To be humbled, and to decide how my time on that Earth with those people will be spent.
