Has Travel Jaded You?

Travel opens our eyes to the ways of the world. Our cultural norms are shaken and stirred, never again to settle in the same spot, as we intermingle with people very different from us. Experiencing life around the globe pulls us out of our mindset and set us down in another, forever. Sometimes, though, after taking in much of the world, the eyes once widened by its life can slip shut again. We haven’t seen it all, but we have seen.

Particularly when we travel abroad only to land in a part of the world not so very different from our own, differences great and small can be difficult to spot. My first time traveling overseas I flew from the U.S. to the U.K. and Ireland, countries so different from my own – in my travel newbie eyes – that I marveled at each bit of unusualness and documented my findings in a notebook so I would never forget.

Today, as I perch in New South Wales, Australia, fourteen time zones away from my own, I look around each day and wonder What’s different from home? Certainly not the language, not the dress, not the behavior, not the music or television, not the lifestyle. This country is not entirely like the U.S., of course. I have spotted a few differences in architecture and automobiles. People drive on the wrong side – I mean the other side – of the road. I sometimes have difficulty communicating with others because I can’t understand their words through their accents. Parrots, cockatoos and magpies fly past while I’m walking down the street. Some foods are a tad different. Some are in a world all their own; namely the popular Aussie Vegemite, a much-loved edible black goo. Despite its unique aspects, though, New South Wales in my eyes is the America of Oceania.

I recognize that the differences are not just hard to appreciate – they are hardly existent. Still, my feeling of being right at home while on the other side of the earth has prompted me to wonder if I might need to be somewhere absolutely full-throttle foreign in all respects in order for its oneness to really hit me. I hope not. Probably not. Even if that is so, I’ve still seen almost none of the world, so there’s a lot of wide-eyed wonder left. Still, my feelings about the differences found in Australia are a far, far cry from what I noticed not so long ago when I first began to travel abroad. I may be beyond getting excited merely over different accents and a few exotic birds when traveling overseas. I think, though, that a state of being fully jaded in travel is not at hand. And never will be.

How about you? Do you find yourself becoming jaded the more of the world you see? If so, have you found a way to get the wonder back?

Thumbnail photo by Samael Trip