WHY TRAVEL SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AN ESSENTIAL HUMAN ACTIVITY

WHY TRAVEL SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AN ESSENTIAL HUMAN ACTIVITY

is not rational, but it’s in our genes. Here’s why you should start planning a trip now.

Travel is in our genes. For most of the time our species has existed, “we have lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers moving about in small bands of 180 or fewer people,” This nomadic life was no accident. It was useful. “Moving to a neighboring band is always an option to avoid brewing conflict or just for a change in social scenery,” “The great affair is to move.”

We are an adaptive species. We can tolerate brief periods of forced sedentariness. A dash of self-delusion helps. We are not grounded, we tell ourselves. We are merely between trips, like the unemployed salesman in between opportunities. We pass the days thumbing through old travel journals and Instagram feeds. We gaze at souvenirs. All this helps. For a while.

I think hope lies in the very nature of travel. Travel entails wishful thinking. It demands a leap of faith, and imagination, to board a plane for some faraway land, hoping, wishing, for a taste of the ineffable. Travel is one of the few activities we engage in not knowing the outcome and reveling in that uncertainty. Nothing is more forgettable than a trip that goes exactly as planned.

Travel is not a rational activity. It makes no sense to squeeze yourself into an alleged seat only to be hurled at frightening speed to a distant place where you don’t speak the language or know the customs. All at great expense. If we stopped to do the cost-benefit analysis, we would never go anywhere. Yet we do.

That is one reason why I am bullish on travel’s future. I would argue travel is an essential industry, an essential activity. It’s not essential the way hospitals and grocery stores are essential. Travel is essential in the way books and hugs are essential. Food for the soul. Right now, we are between courses, savoring where we have been, anticipating where we will go. Maybe it’s?Uganda?and maybe it’s the campground down the road that you have always wanted to visit.

It’s not the place that is special but what we bring to it and, crucially, how we interact with it. Travel is not about the destination or the journey. It is about stumbling across “a new way of looking at things. We need not travel far to gain a fresh perspective.

In our rush to return to the world, we should be mindful of the impact of mass tourism on the planet. Now is the time to embrace the fundamental values of sustainable tourism and let them guide your future journeys. Go off the beaten path. Linger longer in destinations. Travel in the off-season. Connect with communities and spend your money in ways that support locals. Consider purchasing carbon offsets. And remember that the whole point of getting out there is to embrace the differences that make the world so colorful.

“One of the great benefits of travel is meeting new people and coming into contact with different points of view.

So go ahead and plan that trip. It’s good for you,?scientists say. Plotting a trip is nearly as enjoyable as actually taking one. Merely thinking about a pleasurable experience is itself pleasurable. Anticipation is its reward.

Many of us, myself included, have taken travel for granted. We grew lazy and entitled, and that is never good. a friend and travel writer, tells me he used to view travel as a given. Now, he says, “I look forward to experiencing it as a gift.”

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