Saturday, September 18, 2010

Waking up

One of the themes I appreciate from All We Know of Love is travel as a wake-up call to self-absorbed teens. I remember a bit of a wake-up call in my life. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t well-traveled as a teen. I’d lived in Texas, Colorado and Alberta, Canada. I’d spent my summers across Canada and the U.S. My parents encouraged me to see things outside my world. I had all kinds of books about countries around the globe. I heard stories of my parents’ living in Hong Kong. I heard stories from my friends who lived in Iceland, Japan, and South America. And I was a kid who appreciated differences. When I traveled, I noticed the local architecture, tried the local food, tried (unsuccessfully) to introduce other regions’ fashions to my school at home. Still, during my 17th summer, I woke up.

I’d just stepped off the plane and into an airport in Scotland. And it hit me: Every day that I wake up and live my little American life alongside my American friends at my American school, this entire country is full of people waking up and living a life too. And they have never seen my school. And good grief, there are more than 100 more countries full of more people who’ve never seen my school. Who cares if I my hair looks crappy on the first day of my senior year?

How about you? Did travel ever wake you?

1 comment:

  1. For me, it made me realize there are so many other places to live than the U.S., and for years, I have dreamed of living in Barcelona, the South of France, a little town in Italy...or at least traveling there and being able to stay long enough to feel I have absorbed the culture all the way into my bones.

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