School is over, so technically, this blog is too. I finished the alphabet (well, skipped the obvious letters like Q) and, cross your fingers, got an A. But I am severely attached to this topic and feel like I have much more to share, explore and write. This blog let me relive my European adventures and see what I would have done differently or do again. It made me realize how much more of the world I need to see and experience. Now I am left trying to figure out what my next adventure should be. As a recent college graduate (yah!) I am stuck in a weird kind of limbo, deciding what I should do next, in this new chapter. Perhaps an Au Pair, or apply to an international program. Or stay put for awhile (nah).
To Neverland, and Back
How Traveling is Essential to Growing Up
By Jordan Buskirk
Think of a wonderful thought…
As children we dream about being doused in fairy dust and following that second star to the right straight on ‘til morning. We play pirates, Indians and mermaids, hoping to never grow up. Yet at some point, we do. Maybe it happens accidentally, without us knowing we’ve crossed the threshold as the wind closes the door on our childhood, only able to see it through the peephole, a distant past filled with colors and fantasy. We know we can only revisit Neverland in our dreams and recollections, trying to reclaim the pre-adult carefree, worry-free, stress-free life that flew by too fast. Our feelings are bittersweet, growing stronger as more birthday candles are lit and blown out, as nostalgic waves quicken their pace of crashing on the sandy shoreline of our lives. But at some point along the way, among the new memories, we realize it was because of Neverland we grew up. And it is in the Neverland of travel that we rediscover the freedom and joys we once knew.
One year ago I was lost amid the Neverland of Europe, seeking adventures, finding treasure and conquering lands. I studied (well, pretended to study) in Sweden for 11 months, living an unreality that ended far too soon. Field trips to London, international gatherings, cheap flights and national holidays consumed my months, forcing me to lose all sense of the real world and my place in it. As I sat, sad and confused back in the States, I realized how necessary that time was, the importance of my wanderings. Even though I made mistakes, poor choices, great friends, unforgettable memories and a few wise decisions, I also grew up. Little by little my experiences were preparing me for the full entrance into adulthood, when my ATM cards got blocked four times, when my baggage got delayed, when alcohol became a meal supplement, when my computer crashed, when I almost got deported, when I nearly missed my flight home. Then there was my class excursion to a Berlin club, the Swedish gasques and spring holiday of Valborg, sangria in Barcelona, roasted nuts in Poland, below freezing temperatures in Kiruna, Turkish baths in Budapest. All these stories are shared with life-long friends from France, England, Australia, Canada, Singapore and China, bound by a simple decision to study abroad.
To quote a Lady Antebellum song, “It took leaving for me to understand/sometimes your dreams just aren’t what life has planned.” However, it was only my glance back through the looking glass that made the realization possible. It was because of my travels, where I felt I was so far from adulthood and responsibility that I realized how ready I truly was for the next phase of life. It made me think, if everyone went through what I did would they be happier? Would they understand themselves better? Would they believe they could accomplish anything? Yes. Traveling, entering new lands, experiencing different cultures, meeting diverse people, only then can one truly grow up. In order to leave Neverland, one has to go there first. Europe, for me, was my actual Neverland. I didn’t have to close my eyes to see the wonders of rainbows over waterfalls or glistening gold stars in a night sky. I physically placed myself in a world beyond my imagination, with twists at every turn. Yes, I fell, off my bike, down the stairs, financially, and yes, it hurt. But the beauty of the journey and the way it was changing me kept me bouncing back for more. Of course, most of this is easier to see with hindsight guiding me. Yet what good is knowledge if it doesn’t come from experience and isn’t shared?
Growing up is inevitable. Most of the time, we spend it in games of tug-a-war, wishing for the future then quickly wanting it to slow its approach. We speak of grand schemes and plans then wishfully hope this time, the sands will stop. Half the time, we grow up while the games are being played, while we are too blind to see that we passed the test. It is like an unpleasant smack from a walk into a glass door, it hits us suddenly, painfully, and surprisingly, ‘I grew up.’ Don’t get my wrong, we are never fully done growing up, but the leap I am talking about is the one from child to adult, from the world revolves around me to how can I make a difference in the world. And that leap, that change, that epiphany, can only be completely made by traveling, exploring, discovering. We can only hope to find who we are and what we want by displacing ourselves from the familiar, and out of our comfort zones. If you open your mind, you open your heart and soul, and make yourself privy to great things. When you get the opportunity to search your being, you give yourself the chance to change, initiating the first step towards adulthood, firmly grasping the handle that closes the door on childhood and Neverland, closing it and walking away.
All it takes is faith and trust…
Where to start? Go online and browse the web for programs, agencies, travel sites, discounted flights. American author and journalist Adam Hochschild notes, “I’m all for vacation traveling, but the most interesting travel has nothing to do with cruise lines and restaurants. It involves entry into worlds other than your own.” So take an airplane to the islands of the Pacific, get lost amid a pack of alpacas in Peru, free your mind in a monastery in Thailand, help a child in Ghana, climb the steep steps of Machu Pichu, buy shoes in Milan, get pushed onto transportation in Tokyo, drink yourself silly in a beer garden in Bavaria, swim with the fishes in the Great Barrier Reef on the Australian coast, or sweat through the jungles of Belize. The Earth holds 7 billion people, start a conversation with one and see where it takes you, it might just clear the path you’ve been looking for. Stranger things have happened. To steal from the wisdom of J.R.R Tolkien, “There is only one Road; it is like a great river: its springs are at every doorstep, and every path is its tributary. When you step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Yet being swept off is no bad happenstance. Sometimes the most unlikely places turn out to be where we were aiming for all the while. Let the currents be your guide, and when you reach your destination, don’t stop. Because the destination isn’t what you are learning from, it is the journey.
Journey. A traveling from one place to another; a distance, course or area traveled; a period of travel; passage or progress from one stage to another. No matter what you define it as, journeys are life changing, soul searching, perspective adjusting, self actualizations that must take place in order to not only build the bridge between childhood and adulthood, but also to cross it – whether stumbling, crawling, fighting, running, blind or unconscious. As long as we make it over – relatively all in one piece – understanding the journey and experiences we have just made, encountered, mentally noted, than success has been gained; growing up has occurred. A crucial step one should abide by to ensure total comprehension and to reach epiphanic levels of insight of the journey is simple: write it down. Hochschild clearly understood this. “While you’re having the experiences, those that matter most, the ones we must digest, absorb, and figure out what they mean, treat it respectfully. Write everything down.” It is near impossible to have an experience and get the full experience of having the experience while trying to understand its significant implications on your life. Therefore, do it in stages. First stage, have the experience, completely, fully, unreservedly. Second stage, write it down, everything about it, all five senses, no information is too mundane or ridiculous, every random observation and thought deserves a space in the travel-worn notebook. Nothing is worse than returning home and forgetting a particular name, street, place, building, or fact that meant something to you, that struck you and filled you with wonder among a crowded street of tourists. Memory is a fickle thing but oh so important in the process and transformation we undergo – so help it along, caption photos, write Greek wisdoms on napkins or Irish drinking songs on phone memos. Third stage, review it, read it, comprehend the meanings it has on your life now as an exhausted returnee from a great journey. If these three stages are accomplished in order and done in wholehearted totality, Neverland will seem like a mere fancy, a fleeting glimpse, a life that once was. But don’t worry. This is a good type of feeling, one of pure triumph and attainment, where you recognize that wanting to never grow up was a silly idea in the first place, because being an adult means being a child at heart but with more exciting places to play and explore.
So get yelled at by angry Hungarian men or old Japanese women, lose your luggage, get questioned by custom officials, spend hours looking for your hostel in the middle of the night, sprint to catch your train and barely miss it. The situations, good and bad, that you experience become vital to the retrospect you later understand; the moment you say “Yes, that is when I grew up.” For some it happens at the end of high school with a senior trip to Mexico, for others it happens studying abroad in college for a year, while still others find themselves later with a backpacking excursion during that earlier-than-intended midlife crisis. The point is, no matter when it happens, you can’t grow up, can’t fly out of Neverland, without it.
I have only one rule. Don’t let your trip, your travels, your exploration be hindered by your growing up. Wait until the return journey, until a couple of days or weeks after the memories of the airport have faded. Let the experiences sink in, and your equilibrium settle back to balance. Let the moment surprise you, hit you, make you reel back. Wait for it but don’t stop living. Because another essential part to growing up is accepting back your old life, the one before the life-altering experiences, and understanding your place in it as a changed person, as a grown up.
I understand my credentials as a young adult, a mere 22 year old on the eve of graduating into the next phase of adulthood may seem without merit, as with everything, take my advice with a grain of salt, but know that every individual’s childhood lasts a different length, every person’s epiphany enlightens them at a various stage, every being makes that flight out of Neverland at a separate age. I had traveled before, many times actually, but as Hochschild points out, vacation is highly distinct from traveling. Laying on beaches, exploring cruise decks and enjoying parades at the Happiest Place on the Earth differs greatly from getting lost in Stockholm, getting frustrated in Berlin and getting awed in Rome. At 20, I left all I knew behind and flew head first into the unknown, far from afraid as excitement took hold of every bone, blood cell and ligament in my body, leaving me pumped for what I was sure was the trip of a lifetime. Numerous experiences happened to me, minor ones, monumental one, medium sized ones, more than I can count. Yet their impact and effect would never have successfully gotten through, changed me or guided me across the bridge into adulthood if I had not a) taken the trip, b) waited for the realizations to form until my return and c) kept track of my 11 month journey, the places I visited, the things I did and saw, the people I met. I still receive shocks to my system, to my new work-in-progress adult being, when I read over those passages written nearly a year to the date of my return home. How different I am from the person who wrote those words in Edinburgh, Vienna, and Barcelona, yet how similar, like a faint shadow that still lingers. Don’t be afraid of that change, of that shadow, of the unknown. Neverland may seem like a safe haven but life wasn’t meant to be lived on an island of fantasy. Life was meant to be experienced, explored, traveled, recorded, messed up and full. To grow up is only a baby step in the expanse of our lifetime, start it with a flying ship out of Neverland and into the grand world taking place around us.
And just a little bit of pixie dust…
