Don’t Be A Travelling Snob

Scenario: You are at a bar with your friends on a Saturday night and two guys (or girls) approach you during the night. Both are equal in terms of physical appeal and gentility which is what makes the first impression. Now you start speaking to them. The first person is your average joe with a nice job and some palatable common sense. He has a sense of how things should be and is set in his ways. Which is not a terrible thing but it also cuts down on a lot of topics you can freely engage in. Now this is assuming that you are a person who has been some places, met a variety of people during your college days and partook in at least one social activist movement directly or indirectly at that time. You meet the second person who also has a decent job and an average education. But he has been around the world and divulged in academia that merits his liberal sociological perspective. You are more interested in his stories because he does not speak like somebody who gets his facts from one news channel or whose stories converge around alcoholic endeavours.

As the night progresses, you start to realize that most of the conversation involves him correcting your experiences, telling you where to go and what to see and bragging about how he’s been to all the cool places that you haven’t been yet because you are still saving up. Or he may not brag about where he’s been but try and preach about why he chose some unconventional lifestyle of fruit and worshipping a shoe because he learned about it on a trip. Frankly, I would just politely end the conversation and take my leave. The person obviously does not understand that maybe I haven’t been around the entire world yet because my bank account isn’t as hefty as his. Or perhaps, my dreams and goals are a little bit different than his. If they took some time to listen to what I have to say, then they would know why I would have certain barriers or restrictions. Judging me and undermining my life is not impressing me in any way.

Travelling is a sexy attribute. A person who travels whenever they can, both locally and globally, is constantly challenged by competing views. They are cajoled into shifting their paradigm of thoughts and learning the art of tolerance. Books cannot truly capture the essence of a culture or articulate the beauty of a land because they will always be biased and language is unfortunately limited. It must at some point be  absorbed by our own senses. However, there is a percentage of us out there who use it as a tool to be condescending and hand out judgement like its their job. They make the rest weary of being open to ideas. Human beings are naturally averse to change and imposing it in a pretentious manner only drives us farther away. The underlying goal of travelling should always be to learn humility. A person who has seen the world knows that ultimately he or she knows nothing and finds solace in that understanding. These days globalization has made that easy for us because of the multicultural societies we live in. It brings knowledge from around the world right to our neighbourhood. This is also a form of travelling. To grow spiritually is far better than any souvenir you can bring back from a trip.