The start of a new year allows the foresight to look beyond the present. Once new year greetings have been boisterously exchanged and dazzlingly short-lived resolutions have dissolved beneath a cascade of acceptable debauchery, we numb the hangover by hesitantly peering into the future. Because in the future, we’re everything we’ve ever wanted to be — smarter, funnier, kinder — and within those locked moments, lies possibility. Aside from the January Blues, it’s no wonder travel piques our interest so much at the beginning of a new year — for who can resist the rousing opportunity to be better?
To shrink the concept of traveling down to nothing more than a glamourised form of vanity is a somewhat reductive because, of course, it’s so much more than that. Travel is something we crave as humans and by nature, every experience — positive or negative — is meaningful in its own way. Travel is the search for connection; the quest for substance, something that isn’t going to disappear in a puff of warm summer wind.
Constantly inundated with a barrage of bleak news, potent warnings about destruction of the planet and a sense of detachment that permeates the mundane, we are always on the hunt for experiences that make us feel and journeys that shake up the monotony of actuality. And that’s what naturally happens when we drink in the sights of unseen landscapes, taste the unfamiliar flavours of new cuisine, and embark on conversations with strangers that broaden hearts, horizons and minds — it makes our skin glow and our souls dance.
Therein lies the crux of travel, because it’s not about patting yourself on the back for doing a good deed or berating yourself for not doing enough, it’s about confronting the reality of an experience and moving beyond it. Look into the face of your fears and constructed boundaries and drive forward with acute awareness. Make connections that transcend race, background, sexuality and gender. Lay assumptions to rest to reveal we all deserve the same; no more, no less. Travel allows us to open the door to all these things, and that’s what makes it meaningful.
