I’m getting ready for more international travel this summer, and more trips, more on my quest to see and understand. Last night I was skyping with my sister and asked how come we never went and saw icebergs and whales as kids.
“Because it’s too far from the south.”
“But what about Mexico then?” I asked.
“Mom is scared of foreign countries,” sister replied.
“But, but…..only Knoxville.”
Mom liked the familiar, and Dad wanted easy situations that he could manage. If something was not familiar, they’d freak, or yell.
As kids we went to ATI conferences in Knoxville, Tennessee because there is security in knowing the expectations. In a cultic environment, someone else controls your life, and there’s comfort in that. Cults have a place for everyone, even dysfunctional people.
Travel only has room for those who are willing to take risk, to feel the moment, and get lost. Travel is more like Kierkegaard than it is St. Thomas. Kierkegaard said you just have to take an existential leap of faith as if God exists. St. Thomas said you can know with certainty. Travel is much more like Kierkegaard.
Travel is distinct from a tourist vacation. I hope to buy tourist packages some day (when I have more money), but it’s not the same as when you take the flight and just wander. When your willing to risk it all in order to find something.
- The days when the kids and I would pack up all the camping gear and say, “where are we going?,” pull out a map, and wonder into the forests for a place to camp.
- The day when I wandered a university in Asia on my second day in Asia, not understanding a bit of the language, asking around with little response, searching for my language department, walking 1 hour across part of the 35,000 arcs campus, taking in the enormous heat and humidity, wondering if I would ever belong.
- The night when a broken tent didn’t hold up to the hail storm in Switzerland, and I laid in the bathroom, listening to the hail pound on the roof.
People have told me that kids won’t like the risk, but that is not true, for children are always willing to follow me on quests. It’s the kids who are willing to eat nothing but peanut butter for days, and the kids who are okay with not knowing where we sleep that night. And it was the kids who were willing to slide down this waterfall as I trembled on the sidelines, praying they would fall in water, not on the rocks.
When my sister said mom and dad were not healthy enough – just too scared – it clicked. My parents get tense, even yell, when they are in new situations. But the kids just have raw faith that it will all work out, raw excitement.
Cults are familiar. Cults emphasis conformity. Travel means biking up a mountain in SE Asia with four kids and a lot of heat, and not near enough time, and the cars stopping to honk, and others calling you super star, and still others calling you nuts. Travel means going down that steep mountains, praying that no crazy Asia vehicle hits the kids, and praying that the kids use the breaks, risking it all.
In my childhood family we never took risks. Our faith was certain. It was dry cut, and it was necessary. And our vacations were dry cut. Today that part of me is no longer.
What about you? Do you take risks?