 | Since we started planning our round-the-world trip and move to Paris, people have asked me a lot of questions about our motivation and purpose. They wanted to know why I like to travel so much, why I want to move to another country. Some think it’s an great idea. Some think we’re crazy. Some think it’s a waste of time. I think it’s a grand adventure, but I agree that it’s rather unorthodox. But really, why do I like to travel? And why do it in such a big way? |
My parents took me traveling, separately of course, because they were divorced. They didn’t agree on anything, but they each took me on awesome trips. We went on road trips in the USA and flew to Canada and Great Britain. Still, why not just keep my traveling to the usual American two weeks per year? Why go around the world and then move overseas?
A long-lost childhood friend gave me the answer. We met up recently, thirty-one years after high school graduation, and talked about the years since we’d seen each other. We had both eventually left our home state of Texas and married non-Texans. We talked about taking these non-Texans back home, about how non-Texans react to the Texas way of life. I confessed that I had felt like a fish out of water in Texas my whole life, and she said she had noticed something different about me, too, as early as first grade. (Her main observation was that I had no TV. True.) But there were other differences, too; differences that baffled me and made me feel like the odd one out. Over and over again.
For example:
I felt like the odd girl out. It didn’t feel good.
Then, in fifth grade, I matured. I grew up. I blossomed. I sprouted. I towered over the other kids. I was an eleven-year old with an hourglass figure. (And no, I didn’t know what to do with it. Thank God.) I became even odder.
I spent my time reading and playing piano. I got good enough at piano to enjoy myself, good enough to forget how odd I was when I left the house.
Things continued in this quiet, awkward way until high school, when I joined marching band. Then something changed. I discovered the joy of being the underdog, the anti-establishment element. Band rats were the un-coolest, but it was a great band and we worked hard and won competitions. Suddenly something happened to me: I became happy being in a subculture. Band was my turning point. I found a home in the small, quirky group setting, and it was just what this odd girl out needed--a little group united by differences.
In college, I hung out with musicians and international students. We were all a little different, and we rejoiced in it. I grew to love being among people who took the road less traveled. Or at least, people who traveled.
I graduated with a degree that led to grad school, but no husband. First in my family to graduate without an engagement ring. Looks of pity came my way. They worried about me. I put my stuff in my dad’s trailer and he drove me to grad school in Michigan. As a southerner in a blue-collar northern town, I was again odd. But I didn’t mind so much.
I married a Chinese guy. Very odd. It could have been worse, mused my mother. At least, he’s only Chinese. Our friends were immigrants and missionaries, devout and kind. Not odd, just wonderful, but still far from the norm.
Without trying, without planning, I became a person who is comfortable being the strange one, the person who feels and acts differently than the crowd. I don’t want to be the center of attention: my introversion takes care of that. I don’t want to stick out or make trouble or be a snob. I just want to walk to the beat of a different drummer. I did it for many years, hating myself for it. Now, finally, in middle age, I got used to it. Finally, I am secure with my insecurities.
That’s why I love to travel. When you travel, you’re supposed to be the odd one out. You can’t speak the language as well as others. You don’t know the customs. You can’t always read the signs. You might even look different and smell different. You have to be vulnerable, and trust the locals enough to work with you.
That’s where I thrive.
At home in the US, I’m introverted enough to hesitate before asking a waiter for more water. I’ll search all of Target by myself before asking a clerk for help. I never ask directions. Ever.
A long-lost childhood friend gave me the answer. We met up recently, thirty-one years after high school graduation, and talked about the years since we’d seen each other. We had both eventually left our home state of Texas and married non-Texans. We talked about taking these non-Texans back home, about how non-Texans react to the Texas way of life. I confessed that I had felt like a fish out of water in Texas my whole life, and she said she had noticed something different about me, too, as early as first grade. (Her main observation was that I had no TV. True.) But there were other differences, too; differences that baffled me and made me feel like the odd one out. Over and over again.
For example:
- My parents divorced early, uncommon in our little Texas town in the 70s. My mother worked full-time, unlike all the other stay-at-home moms.
- We attended a very conservative church, which made me a little strange at school when I sat on the bench during the PE square dancing unit. But our family was even more conservative than the church, so I was odd at church, too: I wore skirts to mid-week church service when the other girls wore jeans. In the summer, I wore jeans everyday while the other kids wore shorts. Mom and I smashed rock and roll records.
- She disdained football and country music, odd for a Texas woman. If you didn’t like football and country music in a little Texas town, there wasn’t much left to do.
I felt like the odd girl out. It didn’t feel good.
Then, in fifth grade, I matured. I grew up. I blossomed. I sprouted. I towered over the other kids. I was an eleven-year old with an hourglass figure. (And no, I didn’t know what to do with it. Thank God.) I became even odder.
I spent my time reading and playing piano. I got good enough at piano to enjoy myself, good enough to forget how odd I was when I left the house.
Things continued in this quiet, awkward way until high school, when I joined marching band. Then something changed. I discovered the joy of being the underdog, the anti-establishment element. Band rats were the un-coolest, but it was a great band and we worked hard and won competitions. Suddenly something happened to me: I became happy being in a subculture. Band was my turning point. I found a home in the small, quirky group setting, and it was just what this odd girl out needed--a little group united by differences.
In college, I hung out with musicians and international students. We were all a little different, and we rejoiced in it. I grew to love being among people who took the road less traveled. Or at least, people who traveled.
I graduated with a degree that led to grad school, but no husband. First in my family to graduate without an engagement ring. Looks of pity came my way. They worried about me. I put my stuff in my dad’s trailer and he drove me to grad school in Michigan. As a southerner in a blue-collar northern town, I was again odd. But I didn’t mind so much.
I married a Chinese guy. Very odd. It could have been worse, mused my mother. At least, he’s only Chinese. Our friends were immigrants and missionaries, devout and kind. Not odd, just wonderful, but still far from the norm.
Without trying, without planning, I became a person who is comfortable being the strange one, the person who feels and acts differently than the crowd. I don’t want to be the center of attention: my introversion takes care of that. I don’t want to stick out or make trouble or be a snob. I just want to walk to the beat of a different drummer. I did it for many years, hating myself for it. Now, finally, in middle age, I got used to it. Finally, I am secure with my insecurities.
That’s why I love to travel. When you travel, you’re supposed to be the odd one out. You can’t speak the language as well as others. You don’t know the customs. You can’t always read the signs. You might even look different and smell different. You have to be vulnerable, and trust the locals enough to work with you.
That’s where I thrive.
At home in the US, I’m introverted enough to hesitate before asking a waiter for more water. I’ll search all of Target by myself before asking a clerk for help. I never ask directions. Ever.
| But... I love ordering food and shopping in languages I only half know, because waiters and shopkeepers usually go along with you, helping you get what you want and teaching you a couple of words in the process. I love getting on trains to places I’ve never been, seeing the new landscape and wondering what’s around the bend. I love trying out my rudimentary foreign languages on strangers and seeing where it goes. I love wondering what that smell is. I love not knowing, then finding out. I love being vulnerable to my situation, then finding out it’s really going to be okay. We’ve all got emotional baggage, but now I know that my emotional baggage is light. In fact, it’s awfully useful. And it makes my life more exciting. I’m rocking my emotional baggage. And it only took half a century. What a relief! |  |