How was your trip?
November 11, 2013 in Inspiration
If you’ve been traveling for any length of time then you’ve been asked the same questions a million times:
- Where are you from?
- Where are you going?
- Where have you been?
- What’s your favourite place so far?
- Which place has the best food?
- Isn’t it dangerous?
The questions get tiresome sometimes, but I understand why people ask. To be honest, I ask them myself, of other travelers, more often than I should. People are interested. They’re curious. The life of a traveler is one that seems shrouded in mystery and romance, when really it’s more likely to be dust and exhaustion on any given day.
And so we answer:
- Enthusiastically on the days when we feel like world conquerers and the last of the free people.
- Patiently on the days when it feels tiresome.
- Philosophically on the days when we’ve had too much wine or the news from someplace we love brings sad tidings and we remember a place that no longer exists.
There is one question that I truly cannot bear. Every time it is asked, I’m at a loss. I have no idea how to answer. It stumps me without fail.
How was your trip?
My internal monologue runs something akin to this:
- Define “trip”
- Which trip?
- In what sense? Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually?
- Are they looking for a list of destinations?
- What are they really asking?
- Is my trip over?
- Don’t they realize they’re a stop on the trail?
Memories run like old movie tape through my head in a flickering parade of colour, sound and smells: things there really are no words for. I remember a hundred people and a thousand conversations and those handful of life changing moments, none of whom or which can be done justice in a trite answer.
How do I sum up the awe of sunrise over Angkor Wat, with the ghosts of hundreds of years of history watching with me? Or the deep meaning of one sentence gifted by an ancient Vietnamese man who took an afternoon to teach our children brush drawing: “Life is short, but art is long.“
How can I sum up how much, how deeply, I hated Jakarta? Or the absolute relief of sinking into the cool waters of Chieow Laan Lake? Or the physical joy of finding salad in Bali? It’s impossible to communicate the internal lessons absorbed by climbing a 75 meter high tree with no safety gear in Australia, or found on the bamboo floor of a meditation room in Ubud, or standing beneath the killing tree in Cambodia, or lighting incense sticks at the feet of a giant golden buddha on a sweltering afternoon.
How was your trip?
Great question. Terrible question.
How was your entire year while I was gone? Quick, sum it up for me in three snappy sentences. Can’t do it?
Indeed.
And so, I do my best. I can recite the stats and the stories; I can play back the highlights reel. But that’s not really answering the question. I can’t tell you how my trip was, because it has nothing to do with the quantifiable externals, and it has everything to do with all of the things I learned, the ways I changed, and what the world taught me that I hadn’t seen yet. If you have a day, and you really want to know, a traveler can begin to scratch the surface in answer to that question.
More to the point: my journey isn’t over, and neither is my “trip.” Perhaps it never will be, which makes the question a hard one to answer.
There is one voyage, the first, the last, the only one.
— Thomas Wolfe
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First of all, if anyone asks – they have not been paying attention. You are a world- class communicator, you have taken us along – we have experienced so much with you. Secondly, it isn’t a trip, it’s a lifestyle.
Ha! Thank you Granwa! 🙂
I agree, it is a life style. As in life for everyone everywhere, there are high point and low points, things to remember and things to let go. Families take organising, and to get 6 pulling in the same direction at the same time is a hard task, but you guys seem to manage exceptionally well. All through my life, the most interesting people are those who have ‘made time’ to do things and not wait until they ‘find time’ before going somewhere or doing something. It was such a pleasure to meet you all and I hope that as we all continue our life travels, our paths will cross again. Now I hope that this stage of your journey is really fantastic as you connect again with family and other loved ones at “?home”.
Well…considering my most recent trips were to Napa Valley and upstate New York, I haven’t been asked “isn’t it dangerous” too much lately. 😉
I don’t mind “favorites” questions but “what are you plans” questions are getting increasingly hard to answer! We just spent a week in Washington DC with no plans to where to head after that and our parents were completely confused! We ended up booking a flight to Mexico 24 hours before the flight, and now we’re here and in an apartment one day later.
So what question should inquiring minds ask?
I noticed that if I said more than ‘it was great’ eyes started to glaze over. Now I say, ‘what do you want to know?’ Then you know whether they are just being polite or are really interested. We were only away for 4.5 months yet it still changed us and how we choose to live and will live in the future.
Coral, great response! Lois… Anything you want, I don’t think you’ve ever asked me a question you didn’t really want to hear an honest answer to!
I totally agree with your Granwa…they haven’t been paying attention then. 🙂 The response I HATE is when we have finished answering a question and we get…..
“Hurry up and do this while they are young, because you can’t do this when they get older”. I never know how to respond to this question other than make a joke of some sort about me hoping my kids will follow us until we get old and wrinkly. If I try to honestly and seriously answer this question, it never goes smoothly. People think that we travel now because our kids are young and that once they get older that we won’t because of their age. Not realizing that if we ever stop….it will have nothing to do with their age, but it will be a family decision based off of life choices. I always feel like when they ask this it is also because they just haven’t been paying attention.
An even better one is…”how was your VACATION?” Riiiight….because it’s been one big holiday over here!