In Praise Of Travel (To The World Outside Of America)

It appears to be the most saccharine of tales.

One of the criticisms being lobbied at the film that the main character travels to find herself — which is nuts. Traveling is all about opening your eyes to new experiences and discovering things about yourself you never thought possible.

Holidays do cost money and Elizabeth Gilbert was certainly privileged to be able to spend a year experiencing Italy, India and Indonesia, as chronicled in Eat, Pray, Love. On the basis of her travels alone, many people have rejected the book as the navel-gazing of a middle class white female.

Jezebel complains:

So after about two hours of watching Julia Robert travel all over the world or what have you, Barbara and I drove home from the movie, and, like we usually do, we discussed, and we decided that the real problem with the movie was the fact that Julia Robert had to go all around the world to do three simple things: eat, and then, you know, pray, and then fall in love. Must be nice to have the kind of money to do all that, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly sensible.

Traveling does not have to be that expensive. Sure tickets from America to Thailand or India are about $1000, but that is what many people are perfectly willing to spend on their TVs, or for that matter, a year of their fancy cable package. And all that gets you is a chance to watch other people’s experiences.

Once you get there you don’t have to spend a lot of money. Cheap, clean hotels are about the price of a fancy cup of Starbucks coffee for a night and food for the whole day is probably less than you spend for lunch on Fridays.

But the value of travel is unmatched. These are experiences that don’t just last a lifetime, but they change they way you look at the world, your personal world. It opens your mind in a way that nothing else can. You come away from it knowing more about the human race, and a hell of a lot more about yourself.

The trick is this doesn’t happen at resorts like Club Med or when you visit your sister in Philadelphia. It usually can’t happen while your are skiing or swimming or shopping. You need to go somewhere entirely different from where you live, somewhere that is difficult, complicated and sometimes a bit of a headache. Chances are it will be dirty and you won’t be able to drink the water.

America is one of the best places to live in the world and for that reason many people just give up on traveling outside the borders. Seattle is different than New Orleans but both are peas in a pod when compared to Zanzibar or Oaxaca.

So I respectfully suggest that the author of the quoted post gets off her xenophobic ass and experiences the world through her own eyes. There is a whole world waiting to meet her.