Extimate Traveling

I remember a deep resistance when some of my friends recommended to another friend of mine that he should travel before having kids. I couldn’t pin down my immediate disapproval. It wasn’t a full disapproval, but a dispositional one. “Not all want to travel,” I said. They jumped on this claim immediately—travel was about knowledge, about experiencing new things. You don’t know what you don’t know. Their concern was about people who don’t expand their circles, who don’t understand the wider world out there.

For me, it was about a claim on space, but I couldn’t express it. It’s only afterward that you begin to understand where the resistance was coming from. If travel is about new experiences and gaining knowledge, then is physical travel necessary?

Of course, one could argue that experiencing a cathedral in Paris is far better than reading about it. It is also better to meet people than to read about them. But is that always the case?

Isn’t reading a form of traveling? There are things that space cannot occupy. When you travel, you experience the here and now, and perhaps the stories of those who are living. But with reading, there are forgotten stories, places, and people long gone who cannot speak to you today—at least not physically.

I’m reminded of In Search of Lost Time—of a character reading under a tree. I don’t remember much of the novel, but I remember the enjoyment of him traversing the space he was in into another. The words people use to describe it would be “escape” or fantasy.

I could lean in with the Lacanian view of things and say, “Well, it’s all fantasy,” even those things and places people think are not. What is commonly referred to as “real” is not the Lacanian Real, but something more like the imaginary and the symbolic.

I have the urge not to be generous about what they were saying. I could argue that their orientation is too much against lack. Their desire was “missed” because they wish they could have traveled more before having children. The “wisdom” being passed down is a missed encounter—a false propping up of a promised satisfaction that would have never arrived.

I’m not as good a person as you might think I am. There is aggression—plenty of it. Ironically, it keeps me alive: the desire, and the frustrations that come with it. I could force myself into generosity, but it wouldn’t come from where I am, from where I speak.

If generosity comes, it is, perhaps, God-given. I believe the development will come over time. All doors eventually rust and soften, but you have to be honest. You have to come from somewhere despicable and vulnerable.

Ah yes—we were talking about traveling.