Why?

 It is a question we ask ourselves sometimes.

Why travel?

It is a selfish pursuit, indulgent and unproductive. It is a guilty pleasure.

Why do we find it so important to leave home and remove ourselves from our lives to become vagabonds that contribute nothing to the world other than helping the tourism industry with our travel dollars.

Every Christmas we watch a film of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - the 1951 one with Alastair Sim is by far the best - and there is a key exchange between Scrooge and his dead business-partner-now-ghost Jacob Marley:

`But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'  

For some reason, this exchange always comes to mind when the question Why travel? inserts itself, walking along some dusty street past open doors and almost- hidden courtyards, or escaping a rainstorm in a tiny cafe crowded with others, or blowing on my hand to cool off during a hot, humid, sleepless night. 

Travel provides a tiny window through which others can be seen, how they, what obstacles or expediencies they encounter. We can take in, learn, without judgement, and optimally see ourselves in them. We can also take them home with us in our memories and expanded world view. 

Back in familiar surroundings again, our own lives are a little different than they were before, our sight a little altered, our minds a little expanded. The context is not the same anymore, or ever again. Like looking at a piece of art after learning something private about the artist. 

Becoming Marley-esque (before death) is a good thing, we've decided. Not outside looking in but part of the whole business of humankind. Of the world and in the world. We are where we are meant to be.  

Henry the Navigator pointing the way,
as a modern means of getting there follows his lead