Have crutch, will travel

Tomorrow Laura and I will begin our California road trip. Our one goal for the trip is to visit Laura's sister, who lives in a commune in the northern part of the state. Beyond that one goal, we have little planned for several of the trip's days, and nothing is definite. But I think we'll have no problem finding good places to be and worthwhile stuff to do; today Laura checked out from the library a few California travel books, and I'm ready to decompress into unemployment and self-imposed structure.

However, I'd be lying if I said I was 100% excited about the trip and could think of nothing else I'd rather do. Many people wouldn't feel this way if they were leaving for a carefree road trip the next day. For them, traveling is an end in itself and what Laura and I will be doing for the next week-and-a-half is the Good Life.

But the truth is I dislike traveling. My attitude towards it is like what many people feel towards exercising: when I do it it's because it's good for me, but most of the time it feels like a chore. I rarely feel that way towards exercise, but regarding travel it's the exception that I'd not prefer to do something else. I'd prefer to do my routine at home.

It's taken me a long time to come to terms with disliking traveling. Our society tries hard to convince people to be dissatisfied with their day-to-day circumstances—satisfied people are less inclined to spend their money—and what better exemplifies day-to-day dissatisfaction than believing you're better off some place other than home? That's the view I'd like to take—that those of us who prefer to stay put are somehow more satisfied with our lives—but probably it's false. I dislike traveling because I feel a compulsion to know in advance what my week will entail and to have that week go a lot like the previous week. Compulsion has little if anything to do with satisfaction.

Just as it's taken me a long time to come to terms with disliking traveling, it's taken me a long time to accept that routine is a crutch, a weakness—another comfort zone I should exit once in a while. Having a routine is a luxury of normality, and normality is a luxury of prosperity. Only a prosperous person—in the broad sense including all people of the world—can afford to know in advance how his or her week will go. Impoverished people must be more adaptable, more willing to bend to unforeseen opportunities and risks as they present themselves. For such people, most weeks may pass unchanged from the one that preceded it, but such people must be ready to modify themselves according to changes in their environment rather than the other way around.

So I look at Laura's and my upcoming California road trip as an important opportunity for me to walk awhile without a crutch—to go without the comfort of knowing in advance how things will turn out. Who knows? Perhaps someday such opportunities will be forced upon all of us.

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I figure I should embrace my lack of a routine while on the road, and thus I won't be blogging. I expect my next blog post will be on June 20.