There are a lot of people around my age -- young adults continually eager to learn and experience new and exciting things -- who are feverishly enthusiastic about international travel. It's an understandable passion, given that traveling is not only fun and educational, but a mark of personal and financial independence. Some are even so enthused about traveling that they're liable to openly claim labels like "world traveler," "wanderlust," or (God help you) "flâneur" when they're asked to describe themselves on online profiles. In response, I find myself wondering if there's a label for people who have, if not the opposite inclination, simply no burning inclination for worldwide travel. Stay-at-homers? Hobbits? Plantar warts? Radishes? Regardless, as I've mentioned before, I've generally placed myself in the latter category. I love learning new things, to be sure, but I find myself easily rationalizing staying local: there are plenty of books to read, travel is expensive, and dammit, I'm busy.
Despite being a radish, though, I managed to leave the country twice within the last three months. Once for an academic conference in Wales, and again for a lovely vacation with GR's family in Cancun, Mexico. Given that the only other time I've left the country was for a church-organized two-week trip to Ostróda, Poland in 2006, these excursions (particularly the solo trip to Wales, which involved some complicated logistics and layovers in Amsterdam and Manchester) were a big deal for me.
I specify that my trips "were a big deal for me" because whenever I think about international travel, I immediately feel self-conscious thinking about my friends and acquaintances who have had much grander and more daring overseas experiences: my college friend who joined the Peace Corps and spent over a year in Mongolia; my old roommate who traveled extensively and has, at this point, moved to Germany permanently; my high school friend who joined the army and spent time at various international military bases, including in Iraq; my surprising number of acquaintances who (straight-up channeling uppity 19th-century custom) went on a post-grad tour of Europe. Not to mention the friends I've made in grad school who, while now residing in the U.S., were born and raised in places like Singapore and Fiji. However smug and brave my Midwestern self inwardly feels at successfully journeying to the U.K. for four days, my Mighty Mouse sense of accomplishment is soured by the realization that such trips would hardly be blips on many others' travel radar, and I feel a palpable "Gee, maybe I haven't traveled enough" sense of shame. I trust that other non-travelers know what I'm talking about. It's a common, if minor, feeling of inadequacy. Those of us who never went abroad in college (and have found scant opportunities to leave the country since) may occasionally find ourselves wondering if we're actually rubes disguised as fully functioning adults.
This "Am I sufficiently worldly?" anxiety is interesting because, aside from the aforementioned-Henry-James-leisure-class travelers of yore, international travel wasn't really a thing for the masses until relatively recently. It's easy to forget that airplanes are, in the grand scheme of things, shockingly new. Commercial airlines basically made international travel possible for the common human in the mid-20th century, meaning that before roughly 1960 it was perfectly acceptable to have never been anywhere ever. Which begs the question: Am I allowed to mentally reject the pressure to travel, given that 99.975% of humanity that came before me were not only content, but forced, to stay in the same geographic location for their entire lives? Or does the new technology actually invest me with a vague, moral obligation to travel, in the same way that I have a vague, moral obligation to get vaccinated now that the technology is available?
I have, I suppose, until 2016 to answer these questions for myself, given that's when my passport expires.
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