traveling

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
~St. Augustine

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It’s a strange thing, traveling. At least, traveling by plane. I mean, to start off with it’s got all these weird combinations of things happening. You’ve got way too many people in a place that is way too small. Everyone has pretty much everything valuable they possess with them in these tiny bags, strapped to their shoulders or hanging from their arms for dear life. Everyone’s hoping their stuff doesn’t get stolen, spending most of the time eyeing everyone around them nervously, holding a tighter grip on their bags. In any given airport at any given time, someone may be just arriving from a 2-hour trip, about to board an overnight trip to Australia, they may be there to pick up a relative, or to send off a spouse.

For me, I think the strangest thing about it is that at one moment you’re in one city, and then within a matter of hours, you can be on a completely different continent. I mean, if someone from a couple hundred years ago saw how we traveled these days, I think it would really screw them up! These things used to take TIME, they used to really require some effort and thought and purpose. You had to plan, you had to set aside days or weeks or even months, depending on your mode of transportation. Even when air travel first began, people used to get dressed up; they would wear their fanciest clothes on the plane. It was an EVENT. My friend Matt thinks it’s a travesty that now we all wear sweat pants and flip flops and our hair messy when we know we’ll be on a plane.

Sometimes it all annoys me – the lines, the boarding passes, the weight limits on luggage, everyone in a frazzled hurry, narrow aisles, seat belt signs. But I’m grateful for traveling. It’s amazing that I can get on a plane in Santiago, Chile, in the heart of South America, and in 10 hours I’m what, five thousand miles away in Dallas? That blows my mind. I’m thankful for the ease of traveling and the convenience of it. Money allowing, I can go pretty much anywhere in the world that I want and do whatever I want, on pretty much the whim of a moment.

I’m glad that for whatever reason, God made it possible for me to travel this Christmas to visit my family five thousand miles away, and will make it possible for me to again be able to travel to Africa next month. For some insane reason I’ve been allowed to see a lot of the world, and I want to value that for what it is, and not take it for granted. Even if I’m technically on a vacation, I want to take in everything I possibly can; get exposed to all the scenery, food, language, clothing, and customs of anywhere I am. There is so much to appreciate in the world and everywhere is so different (and in many ways, similar) from anywhere else.
The world feels so connected when I travel other places. We all laugh at the same jokes, we all smile and work and go to school and pray, we all get frustrated and joyful and stressed and pensive and angry. Our cultures and religions and languages and ways of life are important and unique, but I think our similarities are most important. We’re all members of the human race, we were all born at some point and eventually we’ll all die. We breathe the same air and toil the same ground. We care about our families and cherish our friends. And whether we realize it or not, we’d all be happier if we cared more about our neighbor than we did about our paycheck; more about protecting our resources than greedily hoarding as much as we want.

The world we live in, though flawed and fallen and in disrepair, is beautiful and intricate and more fragile than we realize.

It’s a strange thing, traveling.