The Reason to Go

"There are three questions," my friend tells me, "that determine true compatibility."

This is research, he assures me, is based upon what an internet dating website found led to marriage. Or something. Not really important, right?

Pause for a second. You probably have it in your mind that it's something to do with ambition or familial values or money (let's face it, more marriages break up because of money then because of sex. I think this is common knowledge, but if not I will find a footnote). However, if you think so, you were not on the team that discovered what questions really did make matches. Are you ready for this?

1) Do you like horror films?

2) Would you vacation by yourself?

3) If you had the chance to drop everything and travel the world, would you?

Now, I'm no psychologist to spend a long time analyzing this, but the math part of my brain noticed that the majority of these questions deal with travel. That thing that happens when you remove yourself from familiar surroundings and reinsert yourself completely ...well... foreign. Are you comfortable finding yourself in situations vastly different than what you would encounter in daily life? More to the point, does it excite you?

That anyone can travel for the pure pleasure of it is actually a fairly new concept in the scheme of things. That it doesn't seem so is due to a very robust travel and tourism industry. Don't get me wrong, young British nobility liked to do European tours before they settled in to help with the managing of the estate, but the kind of wealth that took made such forays somewhat limited by nature.

Need proof? Look at language. Language is one of the more incredible ways of showing just this... and here I digress to a point where I just shake my head. More on language later.

As I was saying, travel for pleasure was limited because the distribution of wealth made it so. Until, that is, faster and nicer modes of transportation made travel so much easier. Buses, trains, airplanes, and cruise liners, all of which were designed to take mass numbers of people from one place to another. But it took some very clever prodding to get people to actually desire travel.

Why do I say that? Well, actions speak louder than words, so let's take the example of the honeymoon. While the concept of giving the newly wed some time together is written in the bible, and granted in writing to Roman soldiers, it wasn't until the 19th century that newly married couples would travel together, around the same time the omnibus was introduced to London and parts of France. The honeymoon is actually one of the first instances of mass tourism. Which was the cause and which the effect, I don't rightly know.

One thing is certain, though. Something about starting a new life together in new surroundings appealed to the population as a whole. It certainly appealed to me. I had my honeymoon planned years and years ago, so you can only imagine my disappointment when my older brother told me earlier this year that the groom is responsible for planning the honeymoon! Shattered. Really.

I have been traveling for as long as I can remember. It is something I can count on to enliven my life. Every stage of the journey, from planning to execution teaches me and brings value to my life. Geography, history, language, culture, nature, society, politics, food and fun...

And tomorrow I'll be embarking on the biggest vacation yet and completing one of my major life goals. I promised myself that by the time I turned 30, I would visit every continent sans Antarctica. At 1800 tomorrow I will leave American soil and not return for a month. This is my travel journal. Geography, history, culture, language, nature, society, politics, food and fun - be prepared to hear it all.