For the Love of Travel
Much of my professional life these past ten years or so has been punctuated, flavored, spiced, and otherwise marked by travel. It goes with the whole consultant, speaker, writer persona I’ve cultivated (sometimes the order of those words changes), and my brief stint as an executive of a software firm did nothing to alter my airplane borne rhythms.
For the first time in nearly ten years I will not fly over 100,000 miles on United Airlines, its Star Alliance Partners, or on any collection of airlines for that matter. There are probably a lot of reasons why that’s so, and it’s a non-accomplishment about which I have deeply ambivalent feelings. Most of my clients have been on the west coast of the U.S. this year, which has made me well acquainted with the art and science of flying on Southwest Airlines. It’s not that I’m on planes less; it’s just that the ones I’m on don’t go as far.
Part of the attraction of “1K” status is purely competitive on my part. I know it’s goofy to think that flying a lot of miles means something in and of itself, but there you have it. If you’re going to fly, you might as well have true road warrior status. Beyond the dubious accomplishment of logging all those miles, I can’t honestly say I know what the value of being “1K” really is. Much of the attraction is that I get access to a special phone number that presumably means I wait less on hold when I need something. I can start competing for upgrades to business class earlier than can the proles who only fly 50,000 miles (if you don’t fly that much, forget thinking about upgrades) and stand a decent chance of actually getting one. I get to board first. In theory I get more upgrade certificates faster though I’m not convinced that’s any longer the case. And I get all those miles that I can presumably use to redeem for travel unless I want to use them to fly business class to Europe, in which case there haven’t been those kind of seats available all year. That’s about it.
Air travel has of course gotten to be a much bigger hassle than it used to be. Some airports are better than others, but lately most have figured out how to meet the requirements for more thorough screening without sending lines out the door. Having said that, I know that I pack less to avoid checking bags (not that I ever did), and nearly strip before passing through the metal detectors so as to avoid the rigmarole the follows if you set off the alarm.
And thank goodness they’ve stopped with those ridiculous questions: 1) Have your bags been with you since you packed them? 2) Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry anything on the airplane? Some bureaucrat somewhere slept better at night knowing that every passenger for the past five years answered those questions “no” and “no”. Like it really accomplished anything.
Travel as Journey
Lost in all the grinding unpleasantness of dealing with airports and airlines is the fact that I like to travel. I’m not alone in that. Most of us are descended from wanderers, nomads, and travelers. Indeed, every culture I can think of—and many more that I can’t—count among their most hallowed and defining myths and legends, stories of heroic journeys and epic traverses and travels that both capture a sense of greatness and possibility, as well as signal the requirement we all face to journey to find meaning, purpose, identity, divinity, and ultimately eternity. Journeying is in our blood, in our genes, and I’m at least partially convinced that you can learn a lot about a person by how he or she deals with the whole idea of picking up and going someplace just to see what’s there, or as Joseph Campbell describes it, of “ . . . bumping into experience and people while you’re wandering.”
My parents were believers in going places and seeing things, and my mother would begin planning our next adventure not long after we returned from our latest. When I was very young, our travels were circumscribed by the limits of kid patience and how far my father was willing to drive. Later, starting when I was about 11 or 12, we set our sights towards Europe, starting with Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria. The next year, Lyndon Johnson made noises that patriotic Americans should stay within the bounds of our own hallowed shores so we went to Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria (living in Rochester, New York as we did, we never took the whole US/Canadian border thing that seriously). In following years, we went back to Europe many times, a tradition that I reinstituted when my youngens were barely old enough to stand the rigors of flying for half a day.
Unlike my parents, I’m a big fan of making spur of the moment travel plans to far away places, and to wandering once there. Again in the words of Joseph Campbell:
“You really are experiencing life that way [by wandering]. Nothing is routine, nothing is taken for granted. Everything is a possibility, everything is a clue, and everything is talking to you. It’s marvelous. It’s as though you had a nose that brought you in to the right places. You are in for wonderful moments when you travel like that . . . That rambling is a chance to sniff things out and somehow get a sense of where you feel you can settle. . .
When you wander, think of what you want to do that day, not what you told yourself you were going to want to do. And there are two things you must not worry about when you have no responsibilities: one is being hungry, and the other is what people will think of you. Wandering time is positive. Don’t think of new things, don’t think of achievement, don’t think of anything of the kind. Just think, “Where do I feel good? What is giving me joy?”
That sense of wonder by wandering is probably the thing I like best about going and seeing. We all need to do more of that, and not just when we’re far from home. Even in a friendly and intuitively familiar city like Sydney, Australia (a city I love and one I’ve visited many times), I find that my senses are on full alert. I notice everything, or at least what feels like everything. The sound of the voices and the mélange of accents. The feel of the sea breeze on my face. The sounds of Circular Quay. The music of the buskers. The haunting woaoaoaoaoaoaoaoaoungungouauaua of the didgeridoos played here and there on a weekend day.
Even the normal hustle and bustle of the business day, the walk up Pitt Street, stopping for a flat white at the local café (or a Grande Soy Chai at the local Starbucks), reading the local broadsheet, and all the rest seems infused with a special significance I attach to almost nothing back home. You’re not just reading the paper; you’re reading the paper in Sydney! You’re not just drinking a hot beverage; you’re doing it 7500 miles away from home, even if the local Starbucks looks just like the one near where I live, which is both odd and kind of cool all at the same time. “Take what comes and be where you like. What counts is being where you felt you’re in your place. What people think is their problem.” (Campbell)
The irony of my wanderlust, even tempered as it has been by a whole new set of dangers, is that I live just outside of one of the great tourist destinations in the world. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that some large percentage of the people who come to the west coast of the big PX on holiday come to San Francisco to see bridges, Alcatraz, wharfs, cafés, art, eat good food, freeze in the fog (they don’t know not to come here in August), and otherwise take in the wonders of “They City,” “The City by the Bay,” or what local iconic wag Herb Caen used to call “Baghdad by the Bay” (a phase I’m certain we’re all avoiding just now).
More specifically, the irony isn’t that I live where I do; it’s that I pay so little attention to the wonders of a city and a surrounding area (think Napa, Tahoe, Monterey, Carmel, etc.) that in its own way matches strides with most of the places I’ve visited—and I’ve visited a lot of them. And yet I see all of where I live with an indifference born of familiarity, my senses screwed way down closed so I won’t be late for whatever it is I’m rushing off to do. In a city of wonder, I have become the anti-wanderer. This is not good.
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” (Campbell)
We don’t travel enough. We don’t wander enough. We don’t treat our daily lives like the adventures they are. We don’t pay enough attention to our journey. We plan too much and wander too little. We think too much and notice too little. Most of the time, we’re not where we are. Oh, we’re there physically, but our minds are somewhere else, sometime else, worrying about a past that is gone and a future that may or may not be.
Getting up and going someplace strange and far away takes care of most of that for most people. The sense of unfamiliarity, of differences, of uncertainty and perhaps even danger, has a bracing effect on the torpor that too easily infects the mind. If we don’t pay attention, something bad might happen! Or something good might happen and we’ll miss it! And after all, didn’t we go all that way so we could see it?
Travel by definition is a change in frame. Certainly it’s a physical change: after all, the view out your window is no longer the Jones’s and their obnoxious Halloween decorations. But it’s also a mental change of frame, a change that unless you’re completely oblivious gives you at least a fleeting opportunity to be someone else, or at least be like someone else. To see different sights, taste different tastes, and smell different smells. To walk in someone else’s shoes. To be a new you. Some of us revel in it, and some of us can’t stop comparing it all to life back home. But nevertheless, the frame has changed, even if only for a moment. No, we’re not in Kansas anymore, how ever did you notice?
That change of frame is of course the first stage of any heroic journey: the call to leave the familiar, the safe, the communal, and “. . . enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.” A changed frame, a changed point of view, and suddenly the tried and true no longer will do. It’s time for the protagonist to grab his or her traveling gear and slay a dragon, marry a maiden, swipe the golden fleece, save a city, save a people, slay a minotaur, or whatever it is that turns a previously ordinary person into a hero.
For many of us, travel has that effect, even if the sensibility is leagues less than heroic in feeling. And yet, for brief moments long after, memories of your adventures past will flash across your mental screen. You’re reminded of new food eaten, or new sights seen; of an unknown road taken marked by a sign you couldn’t possibly read.
A change in frame is also the first key to making good decisions. As executives, changing the frame the key to finding a way through uncharted waters. As marketers, it’s the first step in finding something brilliant and new that will sell, sell, sell! As sales people, it’s the necessary ingredient in building rapport and ultimately finding the perfect solution to your customer’s problem. As parents, changing the frame is the best hope of relating to your progeny. As politicians, it’s the critical ingredient to getting anything done, and to keeping from marching headlong into the bowels of hell (was that over the top?).
The ability to stop seeing things the way you always have, and to view the situation through first this frame or lens and then that one means the ability to see something new, the ability to find the path untaken, the strategic advantage unseen; to uncover the key that unlocks a conflict, the words that will open a hardened heart or frightened soul; to find alternatives where previously none were seen. Changing your frame does that.
More than one person has accused me of making a lot of a little, of using a lot of words to say something simple. Maybe, maybe not. Travel is one of those activities that does that same thing to anyone that’s even remotely aware. Little things that otherwise go unnoticed take on a luster and a significance that is lost in the hurly burly of every day living. Just listening to a big broad Australian accent is enough to make me smile. I’ve seen plenty of water and harbors, but I never tire of the magic of looking out over Sydney harbor. I’ve been to New York City more times than I can count, yet I never miss the chance to walk over to Times Square when I’m there just to take in all the visual and audio extravagance. I’ve been to London, Edinburgh, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, Munich, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Auckland, Sydney, and many more and I can say for certain that the big buildings and sites are grand, but it is the little things you notice along the way that really make going there an adventure, a journey.
As I was flying home from my latest jaunt across the Pacific, I found myself wondering why my level of attention when I travel is so much higher than when I’m just doing whatever it is that I do? The short answer is that the change of frame is what does it. The getting on and off the plane and all the other rituals associated with travel are strong signals to the inner me that it’s time to stop day dreaming and start paying attention. There’s wandering to be done.
I would observe from my years of consulting and working with clients that that same phenomena—the changing of the frame—has the same effect in business. The attention level goes up. The ability to see things differently does as well. All because we’ve been signaled that it’s time to travel, even if the journey is all mental and won’t take us physically away from wherever it is that we’re sitting at the moment.
We need to travel more, to wander more. Or is it that we need to change our frame more? Either way, we need to do it more because we surely need to pay attention more. That really is the key. The seemingly ordinary lives we’re leading right now are lives to be held up to wonder by some wanderer who might chance by from some place else. Why should some itinerate journeyer be the only one to see ourselves and our situation with fresh eyes? Why should he or she be the only ones who get to wonder? It’s our journey. It’s our adventure. Every moment is as significant as we choose to make it. Grab your passport and start wandering!
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Kevin Hoffberg
Last modified:
05/03/06