On Anticipation

Sometimes a book that changes how you see the world creeps up on you. Joyce first gave me a copy of Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel during college, when I diligently read it even though much of it went over my head. (His second essay, "On Traveling Places," finally forced me - after several years of post-modern humanities studies - to look up what "liminal" means.*)

I slogged my way through it, and at some point during the roughly 8-10 moves I've made since then, I lost the book. When Jeff and I agreed to quit our jobs so we could spend a year traveling around the world before the world tied us down, I checked a copy out of the DC library. The book turned out to be an old friend whose ideas I'd been using for years without adequate attribution.

De Botton's first essay, "On Anticipation," explains why we have not made any real plans for our year of travel, other than a one-way plane ticket to Bogota for September 17 and a deposit on an Inca Trail trek to Macchu Pichu in late October. To anticipate travel in any detail, explains de Botton, is to be disappointed by the reality of actual travel, which cannot possibly match our imagination.

According to de Botton, the problem is that we forget to imagine in the mundane, which dilutes (sometimes past recognition) the experience we thought we were going to have: to get to the palm tree-lined, white sand beach, we first have to struggle through customs, manage land transportation, and check into the hotel - none of which is likely to be idyllic. Contrary to de Botton, I'm expecting and am actually interested in the mundane - which can feel exotic when experienced someplace unfamiliar. But what you also can't anticipate is serendipity - the luck of finding just the right restaurant or meeting just the right friend - which is in essence what we are seeking.

Anticipation is not a bad thing. Before we made The Decision, I had spent years mapping out global treks through Asia, Africa, and South America. I memorized the theoretical best months for traveling in different regions and checked out stacks of travel books from the library for their tidbits of cultural information and the occasional photograph. Anticipation might even be a requisite part of truly enjoying a journey - the trick is to not let the journey you anticipated get in the way of appreciating the journey you end up with. So the closer I get to actually leaving, the less I'm willing to lock my expectations onto any one direction.

As illustration (literally): There's a Rousseau painting at the Art Institute in Chicago ("The Waterfall," 1910) that is full of towering jungle, exotic flora, and warm colors - an image of luscious foreignness that appealed to me so strongly I stuck a postcard of it on my wall at work.

From www.globalgallery.com

But Rousseau never set foot outside of France: his paradise is completely imaginary and could never be found by traveling any place real. We can enjoy "The Waterfall" (and similar anticipatory daydreams) for what they are, as long as we don't expect to find that ideal when we venture out into the world. Thus, at some point this summer, I realized I had switched out my imaginings of what our global trip would be like in favor of replaying favorite memories from past trips: my mind wanted to leave for Bogota with a blank slate.

This creates a dilemma: how do we answer the questions of those staying behind, who can "risk" anticipation (and would enjoy anticipating with us our many upcoming adventures), without creating unrealistic expectations for ourselves that will color our actual experiences? Jeff and I have pieced together a partial answer that is purposefully vague on specifics but sometimes manages to satisfy the questioner: In addition to our one-way tickets to Bogota, we know we will spend a couple weeks in Peru. There will be learning of Spanish and some amateur salsa dancing. Perhaps before I head back north for Molly's wedding, we will go to the Galapagos. Perhaps during December, we will head south to Patagonia. More trekking, more wildlife. After the new year, we will go to SE Asia, maybe basing in Phnom Penh in case I can observe the special tribunal at work. March through May would be China - one month in the south, two in Beijing. We would study Mandarin, cooking, and Chinese politics. If there's money left, we would end in France - so I can work on my French - and maybe Germany - ostensibly to learn a bit of German but really to go to Oktoberfest in Munich.

* Liminal: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional.

Post-script:

Even our sketchy outline, however, proved too much anticipation for our finite minds. When, four days before our flight to Bogota, we learned I had an opportunity to go work in the Hague for a year instead, Jeff and I both needed some time to mourn the year we had come to expect we would have.

In anticipation of wandering travels, I had spent days researching and hours shopping for just the right pair of pants that I could use for hiking, yoga, surfing, fine dining, and - in a pinch - as pajamas; had spent weeks struggling with the health insurance industry and my doctors' offices (a still ongoing saga); and had spent less time than I had hoped (but still some) trying to learn rudimentary Spanish. A friend had even passed on a sublet posting for a lovely, affordable, fully furnished colonial home in a cool and trendy neighborhood of Bogota, complete with bicycles and conveniently available through the end of the year. All, it turns out, for naught.

One goal for the year was to learn to live with uncertainty and open-ended plans - something that does not come naturally to me. But it turns out that my purposeful lack of fore-planning has opened up an entirely new course. How serendipitous.

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Update (April 5, 2011): During an emergency trip home to Portland in March, I randomly happened upon my original copy of The Art of Travel, tucked into one of the countless bookshelves in my mom's house (this one, on a stairway landing, was otherwise full of cookbooks). Serendipity indeed. Inside was Joyce's original inscription: "A book to inspire as you head out to save the world."