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    How to Travel
    How to Travel
    How to Travel
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    How to Travel

    By Campus London LTD (The School of Life)

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Going traveling is one of the few things we undertake in a direct attempt to make ourselves happy—and frequently, in fascinating ways, we fail. We get bored, cross, anxious, or lonely. It isn’t surprising: our societies act as if going traveling were simple, just a case of handing over the right sum of money. But a satisfying journey isn’t something we can simply buy, and sadly something that should fill us with excitement can often end up being a source of angst and stress. This is the guide: not to any one destination but to travel in general. It talks to us, among other things, about how we should choose a place to go, what we might do when we get there, how we should make good moments stick in our minds and why hotel rooms can be such liberating places… In a succession of genial essays, we become students of an unexpected but vital topic: how to understand and more fully relax and enjoy (what should be) some of the finest experiences of our lives.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe School of Life
    Release dateJul 30, 2020
    ISBN9781912891177
    How to Travel
    Author

    Campus London LTD (The School of Life)

    The School of Life is a groundbreaking enterprise which offers good ideas for everyday living. Founded in 2008, The School of Life runs a diverse range of programmes and services which address questions of personal fulfilment and how to lead a better life. Drawing insights from philosophy, psychology, literature, the visual arts and sciences, The School of Life offers evening classes, weekends, conversation meals and other events that explore issues relating to big themes such as Love,Work, Play, Self, Family and Community.

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      Book preview

      How to Travel - Campus London LTD (The School of Life)

      1.

      How to Choose a Destination

      Our societies are not shy about presenting us with options, of course, but they are also content to leave us alone with the many deeper complexities beneath the business of choosing.

      A satisfying answer is less simple than it seems, for it requires us to have a deep understanding of ourselves, a good grasp of the nature of the world and an implicit philosophy of happiness.

      Every destination has a character: that is, it emphasises and promotes a particular aspect of human nature. Some, like the long, empty beaches of South Australia, invite us to serenity; others, like the suburbs of Amsterdam, reinforce the pleasures of bourgeois sobriety. Los Angeles speaks to our dormant worldly ambitions and foregrounds a less squeamish attitude to money; Miami or Rio de Janeiro can loosen inhibition and reserve and tug us towards a relaxed sensuality.

      The destination we find ourselves drawn to reflects an underlying sense of what is currently missing or under-supported in our lives. We are seeking, through our travels, not just to see new places, but also to become fuller, more complete beings. The destination promises to correct imbalances in our psyches, for we are all inevitably a little lacking or excessive in one area or another. The place we go to should, ideally, help to teach us certain lessons that we know we need to hear. Our destinations are a guide to, and a goad for, who we are trying to become.

      To make a wise choice about where to travel, therefore, we should look first not so much at the outer world but at the inner one. We need to ask ourselves what is missing or presently too weak within us, and on that basis, set about identifying a location somewhere on the planet – in the wilderness or a city, in the tropics or by a glacier – with the power to help us develop into the sort of people we need to become.

      Travel accedes to its true nobility when we ensure that the physical journey can support a well-defined inner journey towards maturity and emotional health.

      2.

      What Is ‘Exotic’?

      Illustration

      Our societies have a strong sense of what makes a destination ‘exotic’. Normally, the word is associated with palm trees, temples to unfamiliar gods, humid heat and unknown animals.

      But, stripped to its essence, ‘exotic’ has nothing to do with the prescriptive list of places with which it is typically associated. It merely means anywhere we yearn to go which we suspect has something important to teach us. Each of us is likely to have a private atlas of destinations that sound exotic to our ears, and which we need the courage and patience to unearth and bring into focus. The exotic is evidence of what is missing in ourselves.

      We might be inspired to follow our own definitions of exoticism by the example of the nineteenth-century politician and writer Benjamin Disraeli. In one of his novels, Coningsby, the central character – a thinly disguised version of the author – develops a fascination for the factories and heavy industry of northern England. Though he and his friends have been used to holidaying in the countryside, the narrator admits that what would be truly exotic for him would be to go and spend two weeks investigating steel mills, cotton factories and coal mines. He does so, and the experience transforms him into a more serious and resolute person.

      The modern equivalent would be someone cancelling a break in southern Spain to take a life-expanding trip to the appliance factories of the Ruhr valley or the data-storage centres of Montana.

      Sadly, too often, we’re shy about investigating what might really be exotic to us. We may end up in more clichéd ‘exotic’ places from a shyness about locating and declaring our true interests. We’re often still at the dawn of properly knowing ourselves. At least we can be assured that no one will mock or say we’re weird if we reveal we’re off to Phuket or Barbados. But what is properly exotic to us might lie somewhere quite different, in the suburbs of Yokohama, a hilltop retreat in Bavaria or the Norwegian hamlet of Sveagruva.

      We should dare to ask ourselves what feels properly exotic to us

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