Waiting for the Bus
What is the aim of the tourist? I mean, I’m sure there are many, but what are some of them? What common themes run through the cacophony of dreams & aspirations luring them abroad? The older gentleman (45-55) with his dark skinned young wife settling off on a three month round the globe trip. He’s been here for a week & can’t remember the names of the places he’s been without the help of his wife…
Or the Belgium character we ate dinner with last night, slightly younger, early thirties, who has traveled all over the world, goes it alone without a plan & ends up in some amazing places & situations that could never be found in any guidebooks.
What draws them onward? What spark or life event spurred them off in the 1st place? So many interesting individual stories and states of mind. What are they looking for? Or maybe more interesting, what do they find to take back home to the lives they have momentarily abandoned? A good story to amaze & entertain a dinner party? A certain reputation & mystique of worldly knowledge to be carefully cultivated & upheld? A trump card of superiority of experience to play in casual conversation? Or the self knowledge & discovery of one’s own minuscule place & understandings of this crazy world we live in? To see & be continually awe-struck or overwhelmed by the various permutations of humanness in all their many differences & similarities? To prove something to yourself; a rite of passage into individuality & the penultimate American ideal of self sufficiency & reliance?
So many reasons bring them here, I wonder how many people on either side of the exchange, local & foreign, pause to wonder about the why’s lingering in the recesses of their spoken motivations & inspirations. How many would not be able to face those realities? For how many are they the reason they came?
Or the Belgium character we ate dinner with last night, slightly younger, early thirties, who has traveled all over the world, goes it alone without a plan & ends up in some amazing places & situations that could never be found in any guidebooks.
What draws them onward? What spark or life event spurred them off in the 1st place? So many interesting individual stories and states of mind. What are they looking for? Or maybe more interesting, what do they find to take back home to the lives they have momentarily abandoned? A good story to amaze & entertain a dinner party? A certain reputation & mystique of worldly knowledge to be carefully cultivated & upheld? A trump card of superiority of experience to play in casual conversation? Or the self knowledge & discovery of one’s own minuscule place & understandings of this crazy world we live in? To see & be continually awe-struck or overwhelmed by the various permutations of humanness in all their many differences & similarities? To prove something to yourself; a rite of passage into individuality & the penultimate American ideal of self sufficiency & reliance?
So many reasons bring them here, I wonder how many people on either side of the exchange, local & foreign, pause to wonder about the why’s lingering in the recesses of their spoken motivations & inspirations. How many would not be able to face those realities? For how many are they the reason they came?
posted by george at 8:30 AM
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