Travel Broadens the Mind

[ethel_aardvark]

OK, people talk about the obligations of mortgage and kids, and society expecting these things of you. In my own personal experience I’ve actually found the opposite; that the social pressures for me not to have a mortgage or kids are actually stronger than the ones encouraging me to. (I’ve spent a long time attempting to convince myself that in

Comments

[specialknives]

There is certainly a lot of cultural pressure in New Zealand to travel, and to live and work abroad at some point. As you've rightly pointed out evidenced by the Westminster rage, this can lead to people doing it for the wrong reasons, or doing it and having no idea why they're doing it

[ethel_aardvark]

There certainly is a lot of pressure in NZ to have travelled - done the 'big OE' as it were...

Do you find living in Europe that people don't feel the need to travel so much, because it's easier to do so? (What with other countries being right there and all)

And regarding reasons for travelling - I agree it's important to keep the reasons for travelling in mind, and try to isolate the ones that are socially-induced internal pressures from the ones that are actually oneself wanting to do something.... probably good advice for most areas of life actually, but so darn difficult to follow....

[specialknives]

There is an OE-style tradition here - 'gap year' - it's not as culturally ingrained and tends to be a mainly white, middle-class thing (as it is in NZ too) but here, class embarrassment would probably prevent doing what they do in New Zealand which is to put "must have overseas experience" in a lot of job requirements.

The most popular British gap year destination is currently New Zealand.

But additionally, people here seem to go on holiday loads. I don't feel the need, but my friends and colleagues are always going away everywhere - there are so many interesting and different places nearby. Greece and North Africa seem particularly popular.

[mkcs]

In my early twenties, I had two conversations that really made me think about this one.

The first was when someone commented casually to me that of course, people who had travelled the world, like us, had a wider perspective on something than people who hadn't, like the woman we were talking about. Said woman had travelled the world quite widely. I had never left the country.

The second was similar. I was talking about maturity and adulthood, and my conversational partner commented that to be really adult, as we were, one had to have experienced the isolation of being single in a foreign country. Again, I'd never left the country. I'd also not been single in a real sense since just before I went out with my first boyfriend.

I believe that insularity of mind isn't reliant on insularity of travel, but on insularity of thought, and that independence doesn't require isolation to develop.

[ethel_aardvark]

It seems to me like there is a cultural assumption that travel is on the list of approved experiences that make one a better person. Your last sentence is really well put.