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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Bwahahaha: Olivertheworld… RIGHT???? Yeah, we RARELY get that one any more, but I feel ya. 😉 Paz… yeah, that is a weird one… I still love to travel with my parents… some of our best memories are the multigenerational ones. There’s no time limit on family love or family adventure. That said, it DOES change as they get older… this year all three of our teens have travel plans WITHOUT us and are branching out on their own big adventures, which we’re VERY happily in support of… but it’s different, and bittersweet… so I get the root of those kinds of comments. I think at the root of a lot of these kinds of questions and comments is just a lack of forethought… we all say stuff without really thinking about it… I’m equally guilty in other ways. We met a granny in Hawaii this weekend who looked hard into my eyes and said, “Good for you! Enjoy it, enjoy it right now! While you have each other and have your kids. Don’t wait until you’re older.” Did my heart good.
I struggle with this question, as well. I could gush on and on about a place I loved, or rip one I didn’t to shreds. Mainly, I just say: if you’re interested, read my blog. I so often that when I meet with long-time readers, they always seem to know me anyway!
Love this – there are so many factors, and it also depends on the person asking (it’s usually a fake out question of interest, like how are you). sigh.
I get more annoyed by the fact that, when returning home after 6 months travelling, none of my friends or acquaintances really care about how our trip was!
Maybe the best response is: How much time do you have?
To add to Travelogged’s response, maybe add “why do you ask?”. The answer is different depending on what the person asking the questions is hoping to get out of the response – is it merely a pleasantry or are they trying to figure out if they want to do it too.
Sometimes it’s hard to be articulate when your mind has just been blown. For some, the thought that one could journey around the world with their family for years on end is “inconceivable”.
I read an article about surviving life threatening situations and one of the main points was to recognize that your mind will go to great lengths to try to fit what is happening to things within the realm of your previous experiences. One example given involved a restaurant fire. Many diners stayed at their table even though the room was filling with smoke because they thought something must have burned in the oven, not “the building is on fire”. Hence people asking about your “trip” or “vacation”, it is within the scope of their knowledge (at least before meeting you and your family :-)).
I have a question for you- What would you rather people do or ask you instead?
I think people are genuinely curious about travel, whether it’s someone navigating the world professionally or just ducking out for a quick two weeks. That doesn’t make the question any less annoying.
Terry… of course, there are definitely the curious who want to know, and we always do our best to answer! 🙂
Kim… Indeed… we welcome all questions, even this one… I guess what I’d rather people ask is a more “answerable” question. Something pointed, less “general.” “What did you think of Indonesia?” Is a lot easier to answer than “How was your trip?” Or, “What were the best parts of Borneo?” instead of “What did you think of Malaysia?” It’s much easier to engage with someone on particular topics of common interest than it is to try to answer succinctly to huge questions. The reality is that most people don’t have the time, or the interest, to really hear the deep answers, and that’s okay, we get that. I’m trying to learn to be sensitive to this with our fellow travelers and ask the questions that really get to the heart of their experience in a way that they can actually articulate something of value to us both instead of succumbing to the temptation to gloss over the deep well of experience with a, “Yeah, it was great, thanks…” Which is all too easy to do.