Traveling: here today, gone tomorrow….

Self-tutoring about traveling: the tutor observes….

I’m on a cruise right now – something I’ve never done before. When I was a kid, I traveled a bit around North America. It was in some ways a tough habit to break, but once I got out of it, I didn’t want it back.

My wife, though, likes traveling, and finally convinced me to join her. It’s been fabulous, and almost totally different from my traveling a couple of lifetimes ago. Yet, there is one similarity: how people come and go.

I get used to people being in their certain places. At university, or wherever I’ve fallen into a routine, I appreciate other people’s. Most of them I never meet, but I come to realize that person X will be at table Y every day between 16:30 and 17:00. Such predictabilities I find very reassuring, even if I never meet person X.

Traveling, you fall in with certain cohorts also heading to your destination – for awhile. For those few days, they develop a routine, and become part of yours, whether they realize it or not. Very often you might meet them and know that after port A, they’re heading to B, while you’re heading to C. You develop this temporary familiarity which, in the context, can be an anchor.

When those people suddenly take their separate paths, they leave vacancies. Sometimes, other people would fill them. However, by that time, your own trip might be coming to an end: there’s no time to build up a new reality with new anchors. It can be a melancholy part of traveling.