Upon Learning That Traveling and Writing Are Political Acts

Over the last few weeks, I've been involved in a course on the rhetoric of travel writing--not only the modes of travel narrative, but its meanings. So far, it's been mostly meanings: what is travel? What is it to write about one's travels? What are the duties and responsibilities of the travel writer in the postcolonial world? Can we ever just write about a journey without alienating the subject of our accounts?

These are profound questions that, given enough time, thought, and caffeine, can be answered. However, I’ve struggled with at least one of the course outcomes—creating a blog to critically account for my experiences as a traveler. This thing you’re reading, one of many modes of writing about travel, by the way, is causing me to have an existential crisis.

My difficulties with this medium have been many. At first, I resisted the idea that I was any sort of traveler at all. When I go somewhere, it’s to the store, work, or the rare visit with friends. “Absence from home” is my default definition of traveling, a tell if there ever was one, and far more accurate in describing me than one of those Facebook quizzes that reveals which 80’s punk band I am. Anything that involves a prolonged absence from home is also known as “going to California.” Yet, in recalling past journeys, I realize I was once a traveler. That’s sad, considering I have better means to travel now than ever, yet I don’t.

Another difficulty is the realization that, as socially conscious and ethical as I believe myself to be, I have never once acted on these impulses as a traveler. In writing the past few entries, I’ve come closer and closer to the realization that, rather than acting as an agent of positive change in the world, I’ve squandered opportunities to use travel as anything but leisure. I’ve surfed, climbed things, added money to coffers across all the kingdom, but it’s all been just for the fun of it, never with a thought that my impact is anything more or less than indifferent, and sort of blind to it willfully.  

It’s this last point that is most distressing, so I’ve decided to make a change for the better, both in an effort to recover my past lust for life and to seek ways of renewing my relationship with the world that exists beyond my comfort zone. (There’s hope—joining a gym a few years ago was the result of a different existential crisis, and now I can’t imagine life without it.) 

To find out my next steps, stay tuned...