I've yearned to travel the world for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is on an airplane. I remember the bumpy circular patterned-floor of the airplane aisle and the massive chairs of the airport lobby. I'd scoot to the very edge of the seat and stretch my feet out, but, like most three-year-olds, I had a long way to go before my stumpy legs would ever reach the floor. I remember the flavorless pretzels the air hostess passed me right after she pinned a shiny silver set of wings on my shirt. I felt so important.
It was a memory that was to stick with me for a long time.
I don't know where we were headed, but likely it was to visit family in North Carolina or maybe this flashback that I can't seem to shake comes from the long trek back home. We were living in Hawaii at the time--a long way from my parent's childhood homes and far from the tight-knit families they both came from. Neither of my parents are big travelers so it's still surprising to think that they ended up on Oahu--and even more curious that they spawned a child like me. In many ways I'm an anomaly. I don't have the laid-back personalities characteristic of my family, preferring details, deadlines and organization, over their go-with-the-flow approach to most ventures, I don't have their beautiful tan skin, after a bout in the sun I have a lobster tone that no one would ever describe as 'sun-kissed', but even more odd is the fact that I have always felt an insatiable urge to roam.
Maybe I keep going back to this early memory because it was so unusual for us--our family trips consisted mainly of long car rides to places we had friends or family, never flights--or maybe it was because my best friend would come home from choir trips with exciting stories of riding trollies through the steep streets of San Francisco or buying knock-off purses in Manhattan. Whatever the reason, the desire was there--unfulfilled. That is, until my Aunt Julie invited me on a trip to Arizona with her family when I was ten years old. We had long since returned to the East Coast permanently and they were going on a family vacation with three of their children. The boys had each other to pal around with, but their daughter was solo--enter moi!
It was incredible! Not only did we have the most amazing vacation--riding through the desert on horseback, dune-bashing in a hummer, line-dancing with certified cowboys, and swimming until we were wrinklier than prunes--I got to fly again!
It lived up to every childhood fantasy I'd imagined it to be. I watched as the buildings got smaller and smaller, my face glued to the window watching the ground below. It mesmerized me as the scenery below changed from green and fertile to dry, mountainous and brown. The fact that I ate breakfast on the east coast and would be having dinner in the desert was exciting. I imagined myself jumping through the cotton-candy clouds like a trampoline and sat in awe at the blueness of the sky above and below. From then on when planes would fly overhead it would blow my mind to think that those tiny little moving dots were filled with people just like me. I wondered where they were going and found it hard to fathom that enough people flew every day to keep the airlines in business--flights were still a pretty foreign concept to me. I remember hoping that I would grow up and have the kind of life that required air travel. I made a vow that if I ever had children I would take them on a plane and show them how exciting the world was. I wanted them to know what I now knew--that life wasn't the same for everyone. Unlike the large oak trees I climbed and the crawdads I fished out of the creek, some people saw roadrunners, scorpions and cactus blossoms when they walked outside. I knew that other places were different than my little east coast world, but now I had seen it.
I really haven't changed all that much. Instead of quenching a thirst, that trip lit a fire--one that can't be contained. My desire to explore this world has become like a wildfire--starting with me but rapidly spreading to my friends, family and students, one by one. I still get thrills from travel, but now the strongest thrill of all comes when I see that spark lighting in someone else. When I see someone else coming to the realization that life as they know it isn't necessarily "the way"--that through experience we shape how we view the world. I hope to have as many experiences as possible before I exit this Earth. I hope my own children are blessed to see people from as many walks of life as possible--to learn that just because people have different philosophies than they do or alternative lifestyles that contrast with "their way," that we are all just people. Travel does that. It makes us realize how small we are in the grand scheme of things and how we are all connected to one another.
Don't stay in your tiny corner of the world with only like-minded people your whole life. Be a pioneer, a game changer--travel, experience, taste, and do as many things as you can. You'd be surprised what you'll find.