Americans and travel (and a rant about the past)
I just sat through a seemingly innocuous commercial from Comfort Inn while waiting for Ace of Cakes to start again. 'Innocuous' in the sense that it was pretty much like every other hotel commercial--tired traveler, worn out from sitting in the car all day, slowly relaxes due to amenities offered by the hotel chain in question. 'Seemingly' in that the commercial ended on, what seemed to me, a strange note: the narrator concluded by saying, "Comfort Inn. Where you go to relax from a long day of vacation." Not traveling. Not working. 'Vacation.'
But, wait...isn't vacation where you go to relax from a long day/year/month of work? Isn't the point of vacation to relax? Don't get me wrong, I think vacations are exhausting too, but I guess what I'm trying to get at here is why do we make vacations so exhausting for ourselves?
I think the best 'vacation' I've ever taken was my trip to Greece. Even though we didn't see any sights, got no history of the country, and remained in our own little bubble for the entire week that we were there, it was one of the most blissful, carefree, and satisfying experiences of my life. And I think, ultimately, that is the point of a vacation--the absolute indulgence of being a tourist, of allowing ourselves to do whatever we want, whenever we want, free from the day to day monotony that we've gotten used to. Then--the real beauty of a vacation--we return to our boring, humdrum, monotonous lives, sated and relaxed, tired of lounging about and refreshed enough to return to work with a new level of vigor.
Vacations are different from traveling, where the point is to assimilate, learn, and change. Vacations are about selfishness, in my opinion. They are, after all, a byproduct of the age of the 'tourist' in modern day traveling, the harbingers of the shift from rugged travel by carriage and train a la the Grand Tour to the mass produced age of tourism, where you can book your plane, hotel, rental car, and museum tickets all in one fell swoop. (I could go on forever about traveling v. tourism--I pumped out a 12 page paper on it for my Travel in Italy class in three hours, love the subject...but I won't go on haha for your sake)
But then again, this is all my opinion. Maybe I'm just strange in thinking that Americans have a skewed method of vacationing. Perhaps vacations were always meant to be dictated via a strict schedule so as to see as many sights in as little time as possible I'd like to think not, because that would make me sad. It's simply not fair to create a holiday to 'rest' when the expectation isn't to rest at all. As much as they are a byproduct of the mindless tourist age, they are also a byproduct of modern day industrialization--more and more people having access to travel but nevertheless at incredibly limited time intervals. So I suppose we feel the need, when we do go out, to cram years worth of exploring a city into days or weeks (if we're lucky).
Sorry, I didn't mean for this post to get so out of hand. Another thing that I was doing earlier today was thinking about graduating, and high school, and weird shit like that. It ended up turning into a facebook session in which I tried to remember all my friends from Lynbrook (note to those who may not know: I only attended Lynbrook for 1 year, and graduated HS from Arcadia, but most of my Lynbrook friends were people I grew up with from elementary school onwards), particularly the ones who I hadn't really kept in touch with. So not my Lynbrook friends who I'm facebook friends with and still wish a happy birthday even though I haven't seen them for seven years, the ones I really haven't even thought once about in seven years, maybe longer.
It sent me on a weird, weird journey, visiting fb profiles of guys I thought were cute in high school (some definitely NO LONGER attractive), people I sat next to in elementary school, girls I wished I could be like, people I thought were weird/creepy, some people I'd only known the name of but never even talked to. Friends of friends of friends...etc etc.
Some people were exactly how I'd imagine them to grow up: either taking the path that I could imagine their high school selves planning on taking, or in some extreme cases simply older versions of the same person. Others were incredibly different: some people who were previously straight are now gay. Others are uglier, prettier, classier, edgier. But no one really turned out completely different from who they were in high school. All the popular ones still had walls/photos deluged with comments from old high school buddies. The loners barely had any facebook friends from Lynbrook (one guy only had 1 fb friend in common with me, as opposed to the average of 25-30). The super-asian, ASB ones were all in asian sororities or fraternities, sometimes together.
It kind of made me wonder about myself. I think I've changed a lot since high school--actually, I know I've changed a lot since then. I care about things I didn't even know about then. I do things I never would have dreamed of then. I like things that I hated then, hate things that I liked. But to someone perusing my limited public profile on Facebook, would it seem like I'd changed? Would I seem any happier, sadder, more or less popular or adventurous or outdoorsy?
Or would they think to themselves, wow, she's just like how I remember her? Or worse, ooh, her life took a turn for the worse...
Chances are, they aren't thinking about me: they probably don't engaging in the same time-wasting activities that I am at the moment. But still, it's interesting, don't you think? Maybe I've been this different person all along, and now-me has been inside past-me this whole time, but it's just taken certain circumstances to bring her out. And maybe I think I'm so different now because none of us can see our own permanent, dormant characteristics: only others can, and that's why I look at my old classmates and go, ahhh...s/he's still the same as ever.
Too bad I won't be going to this reunion. I care more about how these people will turn out than the people I ended up graduating with.
But, wait...isn't vacation where you go to relax from a long day/year/month of work? Isn't the point of vacation to relax? Don't get me wrong, I think vacations are exhausting too, but I guess what I'm trying to get at here is why do we make vacations so exhausting for ourselves?
I think the best 'vacation' I've ever taken was my trip to Greece. Even though we didn't see any sights, got no history of the country, and remained in our own little bubble for the entire week that we were there, it was one of the most blissful, carefree, and satisfying experiences of my life. And I think, ultimately, that is the point of a vacation--the absolute indulgence of being a tourist, of allowing ourselves to do whatever we want, whenever we want, free from the day to day monotony that we've gotten used to. Then--the real beauty of a vacation--we return to our boring, humdrum, monotonous lives, sated and relaxed, tired of lounging about and refreshed enough to return to work with a new level of vigor.
Vacations are different from traveling, where the point is to assimilate, learn, and change. Vacations are about selfishness, in my opinion. They are, after all, a byproduct of the age of the 'tourist' in modern day traveling, the harbingers of the shift from rugged travel by carriage and train a la the Grand Tour to the mass produced age of tourism, where you can book your plane, hotel, rental car, and museum tickets all in one fell swoop. (I could go on forever about traveling v. tourism--I pumped out a 12 page paper on it for my Travel in Italy class in three hours, love the subject...but I won't go on haha for your sake)
But then again, this is all my opinion. Maybe I'm just strange in thinking that Americans have a skewed method of vacationing. Perhaps vacations were always meant to be dictated via a strict schedule so as to see as many sights in as little time as possible I'd like to think not, because that would make me sad. It's simply not fair to create a holiday to 'rest' when the expectation isn't to rest at all. As much as they are a byproduct of the mindless tourist age, they are also a byproduct of modern day industrialization--more and more people having access to travel but nevertheless at incredibly limited time intervals. So I suppose we feel the need, when we do go out, to cram years worth of exploring a city into days or weeks (if we're lucky).
Sorry, I didn't mean for this post to get so out of hand. Another thing that I was doing earlier today was thinking about graduating, and high school, and weird shit like that. It ended up turning into a facebook session in which I tried to remember all my friends from Lynbrook (note to those who may not know: I only attended Lynbrook for 1 year, and graduated HS from Arcadia, but most of my Lynbrook friends were people I grew up with from elementary school onwards), particularly the ones who I hadn't really kept in touch with. So not my Lynbrook friends who I'm facebook friends with and still wish a happy birthday even though I haven't seen them for seven years, the ones I really haven't even thought once about in seven years, maybe longer.
It sent me on a weird, weird journey, visiting fb profiles of guys I thought were cute in high school (some definitely NO LONGER attractive), people I sat next to in elementary school, girls I wished I could be like, people I thought were weird/creepy, some people I'd only known the name of but never even talked to. Friends of friends of friends...etc etc.
Some people were exactly how I'd imagine them to grow up: either taking the path that I could imagine their high school selves planning on taking, or in some extreme cases simply older versions of the same person. Others were incredibly different: some people who were previously straight are now gay. Others are uglier, prettier, classier, edgier. But no one really turned out completely different from who they were in high school. All the popular ones still had walls/photos deluged with comments from old high school buddies. The loners barely had any facebook friends from Lynbrook (one guy only had 1 fb friend in common with me, as opposed to the average of 25-30). The super-asian, ASB ones were all in asian sororities or fraternities, sometimes together.
It kind of made me wonder about myself. I think I've changed a lot since high school--actually, I know I've changed a lot since then. I care about things I didn't even know about then. I do things I never would have dreamed of then. I like things that I hated then, hate things that I liked. But to someone perusing my limited public profile on Facebook, would it seem like I'd changed? Would I seem any happier, sadder, more or less popular or adventurous or outdoorsy?
Or would they think to themselves, wow, she's just like how I remember her? Or worse, ooh, her life took a turn for the worse...
Chances are, they aren't thinking about me: they probably don't engaging in the same time-wasting activities that I am at the moment. But still, it's interesting, don't you think? Maybe I've been this different person all along, and now-me has been inside past-me this whole time, but it's just taken certain circumstances to bring her out. And maybe I think I'm so different now because none of us can see our own permanent, dormant characteristics: only others can, and that's why I look at my old classmates and go, ahhh...s/he's still the same as ever.
Too bad I won't be going to this reunion. I care more about how these people will turn out than the people I ended up graduating with.