Summer is wandering time and I have been surrounded by stories of it this week. I am getting antsy for a road trip of some type!
My traveling daughter, who has traipsed across the west for the last 4 months, came back in town this week and told of some of her adventures off the beaten path.
A good blogging buddy of mine is on her bazillionth trip to Pakistan and is great at posting photos and telling of the feel of the place.
A running buddy just returned from an anniversary trip to Paris and posted photos.
Another daughter went off to the beach in California.
Another running buddy went off to Canada with his wife (and happened upon an annual nude bike ride! That cracked them up, big time)
We are not sure what our summer adventure will be yet, but I will let you know! What adventures are you hoping to experience?
I have a friend somewhere in the world, not sure where, named Agnes. She has traveled the globe, sat with prestigious, inspiring people, experienced life in ways most of us do not. She is in deep, deep love with her husband, with whom she experiences many of these things. Those are her dreams, to travel with him.
He now is struggling with a pretty serious illness and that travel isn’t something they can undertake for a while. She wishes she could, she yearns for it. But though those are her big dreams, they aren’t her only dreams. She makes smaller dreams a reality for herself and her husband in tender, kind and intimate gestures.
She tells the world about these things, along with her larger dreams, in her blog. I read it and it reminds me again and again how much I love knowing people like that are in the world. I don’t really need to ever meet her or her husband, though what a pleasure it would be, I have no doubt. All I really need to be inspired is to know the two of them exist.
Read her latest entry about her manifestation of a little dream at the end of the night and then go and see if you can’t find the same fulfillment in the magic of your own small world.
At first I think, how pathetic – this stupid goldfish swimming around in circles going nowhere. But as an analogy how different is it from our own lives?
We are trapped on the earth, we aren’t going anywhere (well, except for the 20 million I am going to pay to go up in a rickety Russian spaceship, but besides that). Whether we travel all around the globe or barely make it out of our town, we still are contained by something.
The breakdown in the analogy is that we can change the size and look of our bowl while the goldfish can’t. But, in truth, we do not do that unless we feel some unmet need. Even then often times we will suffer with an unfulfilled dream or hope and not take the steps necessary to expand or change our bowl.
What is your bowl? Are you satisfied with it? Do you have the courage to reshape your bowl to encompass the world you want to swim in?
Hola Napkin Kin! Today is the last of my week-long series on travel. Would love to hear your ideas for other week-long series when you have the time. email me at marty@martycoleman.com or just post a comment.
I love to take trips when I can, whether it be by path, road, air or water (road is my favorite). One of the main reasons is that I am a ‘noticer’ (thanks to Erin for that recent designation of moi). I go somewhere and I notice the different accents, products, clothes, food, store fronts, air, potholes, patterns and ways of doing things. It is exciting to see all those new things, to notice the differences, to experience the newness.
With the noticing comes education. I learn first how provincial I am. I get use to my world, my town, my way of doing things. By traveling I learn that I am small and the world is big. I get bigger when I realize that. And yes, I get a bigger waistline too, from ‘noticing’ all the new food!
With education comes appreciation. I appreciate that the world is open to me. I appreciate that I have a home and familiar places I can return to. I appreciate how the world does not revolve around me. I love seeing the people on the street in a new locale, especially if I draw or photograph them. I think of it as a little collision of humanity in a large world, a bump and we are back on to our own trajectory.
With appreciation comes gratitude. I am grateful that I have the means and the ability to travel. I know it won’t last forever. I know I will someday be at a point when I won’t travel. I will be gone from the earth. I don’t mind that. But I would mind not being aware of that and taking advantage of the time I do have to move about.
With gratitude comes love. Love for those who I notice along my path. The waitress, the hot dog vendor, the random person from Idaho next to me at the fireworks, the couple on the boat on a romantic weekend. I have a heart of hope for them. I wish them well. I encourage them. I love them.
The greater love is for those I know and am with on the journey. My wife, daughters, friends. I see them in a new light. I see new aspects of them, their growth, their struggles, their eccentricities and intelligence. I have more to love of them that way.
Travel is good. Get up and go.
“You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting so get on your way!” – Dr. Seuss.
It’s travel week on the Napkin Dad Daily. Ideas stimulated by my vacation last week.
The hardest thing to do is to escape oneself. The construction of self takes many years, decades. And when you travel it isn’t much different than putting your home on a trailer and moving . You may go to a new location but everything follows you. How do you leave your world behind and reconstruct your self, even if just a bit, when you go away from home?
One way is to bring very little. Expect to buy things where you go. Maybe not expensive stuff, but shampoo, accessories, certain clothing items, etc. Don’t bring all the things you need to make yourself as you always are. Go au natural with things, see what you discover about yourself and the new place you go.
I remember going to Europe in 2003 with my daughters and one of the most fun and informative things was going into grocery stores to buy food for picnics and snacks, and other needed stuff. The hair product company, Garnier, was everywhere and I thought the design and packaging was very interesting. Lo and behold, a few years later they come to the USA and I see them marketing to Americans.
Travel and see with new eyes.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust, French Novelist, 1871-1922
This is a week long series on travel, a result of my thoughts from my recent vacation to Cape Cod and Boston over the 4th of July week.
It’s very easy in the current age to ‘see’ the world via photographs, video, internet and words. It is easy to think you are exposed to it all. And in some ways you are.
But go to that same place you have seen on TV and you quickly realize how much more you experience in person. It is the air, the light, the people, the accents, the birds, the animals, the manners, the food, the sidewalks, the trees, the smells, the buildings, the events.
They all add up to the experience of knowing another place and reading more of the book.
Go somewhere and really notice.
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” – St. Augustine – church father, 354-430 AD
Day 2 of decompression from my vacation. I am still thinking about travel and so am going to continue this week (maybe) in drawing about it.
During our vacations it is a tradition that about half way in we will turn to each other and ask ‘what is your favorite part, so far?’. We will tell what event was the best in our minds, and also what part was the least fun or interesting. This year the whale watching was pretty much the #1 favorite of the first half.
What is funny is that the first 2 1/2 hours of the whale watching trip was easily the worst time of the trip up to that point. It was cold, it was very foggy (no horizon in sight) and it was boring. The people around me were purple lipped from the cold, red faced from the wind, eyes watering from the wind, and bored.
It wasn’t until we had pretty much given up hope and realized we were have to return to the Provincetown without seeing a whale that 2 whales appeared. Then the mood changed. Then the sun broke through just a bit. Then the whales came close. Then the whales breached (jumped) out of the water. Sometimes completely. Then they did it again, very close to the boat. They put on a show like the captain and the naturalist and the crew hadn’t even ever seen. The lady next to us had been on 20 whale watching tours and had never seen one jump, much less the dozen or so we saw. She was wooping it up like she was at a tight baseball game in the 9th inning! The whale watching fiasco of a mere 45 minutes earlier was just a great lead in to the big climactic story of the breaching whales in the glorious setting sun.
What we remember is greater than what we saw. It is the story, the arch of the event, the people, the feeling, the mood and the mood swings, that we add into the event to make it what it is in our mind. I love that about travel.
“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli – 1804 – 1881, British Prime Minister (twice) under Queen Victoria
Hello all you Napkin Kin! I am back from vacation with a new drawing, appropriately about traveling.
I love traveling for the education and the sights and the uniqueness of the place. Going somewhere for just sun and sand and doing nothing is the goal for some, but for me I want to see the world, meet the people, see the art, the sports, and eat the food.
I find out who I am when I travel. Partly by seeing who I am not by experiencing a culture I am not a part of, and partly by seeing who I am by how I react to it all.
I know one thing it always makes me feel. And that is gratitude that I can see the world and love that the world allows itself to be seen.
“A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi
“People travel to faraway places to watch in fascination the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes
I love to travel and am looking forward to getting back to Europe next year maybe. I remember visiting for the first time in 2003 and realizing how interesting people were, on the bus, at the beach, in the B&B or cafes. Then coming home and seeing that, if I just paid attention, there were interesting unique people and things in my home town as well.
I haven’t spotted mechanoman (see above) yet, but I will introduce myself if I do!
“The longer you stay in one place, the greater your chances of disillusionment.” – Art Spander
I wonder if the author meant staying physically in one place or staying emotionally in one place. I can see both being true, but I can also see staying in one place emotionally increasing the chances of happiness as well. What do you think?
