Luke's Apologia... and Mine

Yesterday, Luke's blog finally saw an update, one that I've been bugging him about for two months now: his mia culpa (in a way) for his surprise return to the states. Go ahead and read his post now, because it both informs and reinforces everything I'm about to say. That and it's a pretty rock-solid piece of insight in it's own right.

Read it? Good. Moving on then...

I draw attention to Luke's post on my blog, not only because it ties up the final loose end of our crew's four way split months ago, but also for another important reason: as I read this paragraph in particular... 

Well, since coming home I've realized why I left. After graduation, the crossroad of crossroads in one's life, I found myself with a distinct need for some direction in my life. I hadn't taken the last two years of my life seriously, traveling Europe and planning our next trip, so that by the time I was actually on the trip, I was burnt out. I realized that I had lost all sense of purpose. I know that travel can be a justifiable purpose, but for this trip, it was not for me. Upon coming home, I begin studying intensely for the LSAT and am in the process of applications.

...I couldn't help but think, I should have written that.

Even back when I still wanted to castrate Luke (a fairly harsh reaction, admittedly), I had to admit that there were a lot of parallels between Luke's decision to fly home and my own to settle down, however long, in Damascus. Even my first E-mail to Beddor after making up my mind began with a warning that I was about to pull a Luke on him. On the other hand, I figured our motives in leaving the homeboys behind were probably far different: in spirit, I told myself, my decision to stay in Syria meshed perfectly with the greater goals of the trip- to experience the world from an entirely different perspective, to meet a whole lot of fascinating people, and to learn quite a bit about life along the way. Luke was just running away.

Well, I guess I owe Luke an apology, though it would go against my very DNA as a male to actually give it. In the end, his reasoning makes perfect sense and meshes almost eerily well with my own for our respective abandonments. In fact, replace LSAT with Arabic, home with Syria, and 2 years with as long as I can remember, in the paragraph above and you have nearly my exact reasons for staying in Syria at the expense of everything else.

As Luke says, traveling isn't exhausting for all the reasons that people think that it should be exhausting; the constant uprooting from one location only to begin anew somewhere else, the burden of lugging one's home- stuffed neatly into a single backpack- across countries and continents, the vulnerability that comes with placing yourself in unknown situation after unknown situation on a near daily basis, the occassional flirtation with genuine danger, and, as Luke says, even the squatter and the many hours spent in mediation between it and a furious bladder, are all part of the excitement and the novelty and the richness of experience that lead us to travel in the first place. They definitely aren't what breaks you; at least not in my case and apparantly not in Luke's either.

Instead, it's the late nights and even later mornings; it's the one shot of raki too many; it's the confused look on the little old man in traditional Kurdish clothing's face as you ask him to pose so you can take his picture and commemorate such a novelty; it's the $2 haircut that you obstinately haggle down to $1.25, and then pat yourself on the back when you decide, as a symbol of Western generosity, to pay the original price anyways; it's the $10 tourist T-shirt that you purchase in a moment of weakness, only to find yourself wearing it in a country two weeks later where that $10 could have fed a family for a week; it's the conversation with an Italian girl who moved to Kenya on her own when she was 17 to do what little she could to change things; it's the Lonely Planet you cradle in your hand and thumb through as she tells you this.

(Disclaimer: I'm starting to really, really hate Lonely Planet.)

Meanwhile, it's the cold breath of the past on the back of your neck, as you realize the kind of person you could have been over the years, and weren't, and the contributions you could have made, and didn't. And it's the moment when you look into the mirror, ready for eyes to burn back at you defiantly and scars and creases and folds to attest to a life lived for something... and all you see is a reflection.

For me, the most telling moment was when I watched a Syrian kid, maybe twelve years old, tumble two-thirds of the way down the side of the massive mound propping up Aleppo's citadel, only to lay limp like a fish that's been out of water a moment too long, and... I instinctively pulled out my camera and started snapping pictures.

So while I can't speak for Luke, I do find myself nodding my head when he says that it wasn't hardships of the road that wore him down. For me, it was the guilt. Travel is an education that money can't buy, but it's also an indulgence. Some people, of course, have unquestionably earned the right to indulge themselves a little.

I just don't count myself among their number just yet.