Somewhere around 2000 BC, a Babylonian made a resolution as the calendar (to be precise they had no calendar) struck 1999 BC to return the farm equipment he had borrowed the year prior. One can only imagine the exchange between neighbors as the seeder plough was returned.
This seeder plough is wrecked from all the barley youve been planting, and where is my funnel?
Conversely, No problem, you can use it any time, oh and there is also a funnel if you need it.
On January 1st, 2005 more people continued to make New Year's resolutions and while most of those resolutions focused on a need for self-improvement, my resolution for the year 2005 is a hope that more Americans will travel abroad.
Recently, a friend returned from a tour of Sweden, Norway and Finland. While there he wrote extensively about his travels and experiences, cultivating one such story into a performance piece that would be created on stage later that month. His travel occurred at the height of the 2004 presidential campaign, and he was amazed to find one Scandinavian after another espousing his/her love for America, a picture rarely painted by the mainstream American press. Recounting his tales to me one night, he harped on this one fact.
I couldnt believe it, he said, And dont get me wrong, they are fervently against the war, but they genuinely love this country to a degree I think would make any patriot jealous.
It is rather disconcerting, or enlightening perhaps, to hear a friend speak this way. It is one thing to see snapshots of monuments or public art in a friend's album of travel photos, it is quite another to look into a friends eyes and see his astonishment at a revelation he only discovered through traveling.
While not all travels are revelatory to the degree of my friend, traveling by its very nature broadens perspective. The United States is not Canada, Spain is not France, Zimbabwe is not Chad, and Mongolia is certainly not China. I wonder sometimes what my vision of the world would be if I had not traveled from India to Sydney to the US all before the age of 3. What if I had remained in the insularity of doting aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers? To what degree would I dress the way they dress, speak the language they speak or perform the rituals they perform? Would I concern myself equally with happenings in Japan as America? It is this broader perspective that forces certain questions to be posed. And it is these questions that shape an understanding of the world around us.
My personal experiences of traveling will forever be linked with images of my father dutifully reminding me of the joy of experiencing something new. At the airport he would describe the differences between regular travelers and those on vacation by the appearance they kept -- the former carrying laptop computers, shaving in the bathroom, crumpled suits and sunken eyes, the latter packing multiple suitcases that would undoubtedly double as they brought back gifts for friends and relatives.
Later on the plane, he would unbuckle his safety belt, take me by the hand and walk me to one of the doors of the plane. There, he would place me on the single seat (normally reserved for the airline hostess) and with a widening smile as the sun pierced the clouds and the plane surged faster towards the heavens, say, Look, see those clouds, those over there, in the distance, rain clouds. And look at the ground below, those cars were once three or four times the size of you, but from up here they look like ants.
Riding the rails in both first and second class in India my father would strike up conversations with passengers to catch up on the national news and engage in political conversations. As merchants entered the rail cars he would explain to me why we had not purchased the samosas and water they sold. I didnt appreciate his fascination for this interaction, a father bringing something new to the son, or his wealth of knowledge about lands rather foreign to me at the time. I was more interested in playing my Gameboy in my seat next to my mother or sleeping with my head resting against the frosty window (small icicles formed inside the car due to the air-conditioning as 100 degree temperatures created hallucinations on the street).
But I still remember the glint in his eyes as he filled my world with images I have not since forgotten. Later, I would come to share his joy of traveling, a sense of adventure, of not knowing what would come around the next bend. I happily hopped onto a plane to visit a girlfriend in California, or spent time on a farm in North Carolina (as a city-kid, this experience was the most foreign) or traveled through London on a return trip to India. I sought out the different to understand the things at home in a new context.
Prior to the Iraq War, in December of 2002, actor Sean Penn traveled to Iraq to, in his words, come here and see a smile, to see a street, to smell the smells, talk to the people and take that home with me. Whether you agree with the Iraq War or not, there is a certain resonance with all Americans in those words. We as humans lend a certain humanity to things we see first hand, and sense a greater compassion towards those we meet in person. Would we view our involvement in Iraq differently if we had visited and spoken with the people?
I am a high school math teacher, and after asking some of my students if the US government had pledged enough funds for the tsunami disaster in South East Asia, I was surprised to find half of them responded that we had pledged too much. I made no judgment on their opinions -- for some of their reasons were quite compelling -- I only wondered if they would have thought differently if they had ever visited those countries.
Published in Pop + Politics dot com, January 06, 2005