Why do I travel?

[mangosteen]

Just recently, I set up my travel schedule for the next few months, of which the vast majority is leisure travel. I'm not a really obsessive planner, but having a travel habit on a budget requires a bit of foresight. Considering the time and money that I put into traveling, I've been trying to figure out why travel is so important to me. There are all the obvious reasons, such as wanting some variety in my surroundings, having friends in far-flung places (which, as I have observed previously, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy), and wanting to just "get away for a while", but I found a few others...

One of the interesting ones was "Slowing down the clock". There are well-known perceptual reasons why time seems to pass faster as one gets older, the most obvious one being that every moment going forward is a progressively smaller chunk of your past. While a season seems like an eternity to a child, another three months just isn't that long when you've gotten through 360 of them. Other reasons are

• less discovery on an every-day basis
• more daily routine, and therefore less to distinguish the days
• a lower density of "life events" as one gets older

When I'm at home, I tend to look at a week or a month at a time. A month is two paychecks. A paycheck is two weeks. A week is work, several social events, one class, and a couple of quiet nights at home. There are no "days" anymore.

Except on vacation.

When traveling, I may have an overall master plan for my trip, but I tend to look no more than one or two days ahead in the exact planning of things. I get to wake up and say "What am I going to do today?" "What cool people am I going to meet today?" "What am I going to learn or realize or observe today?" Every day is obviously different and obviously special.

Realization: It's the new and the different that slows down the clock.

So what have I learned from this? Finding the new experiences while traveling is comparatively easy, and it makes me happy. It's finding those experiences at home that takes a little more work, and right now it is evidently right above the threshold of what I'm willing to do. This must change. I'm still working on how. More when I know.

Comments

[fidgetmonster.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for posting a description of why time passes so quickly as an adult. I'd had some ideas before, but you managed to articulate it all in a way that made total sense to me, finally. Time passage is something that has bothered me for years, and probably the reason I keep 'searching' for more meaningful things in my life.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

time perception is quite flexible, as has been noted.

i've found that a known fixed schedule, if one doesn't enjoy it,
can make time seem to DRAG. i've had weeks that seemed like years.
if you're truly deadened beyond that, the "years" pass unnoticed
though, until you wake up again, and lament the passage.

when you have options on what to do, many hobbies, or other things,
time seems to fly even FASTER.

now, which is better? there can be more than potential frustration
at having "not enough time" to do all the things you want. perhaps,
having done all you wanted, and finding you have time left over, and
not knowing what to do with it? some folx would consider that wasted
time and be frustrated.

tricky :)

time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana

time flys like an arrow
time is fast like arrow (time, flys by like an arrow)
time flys as if they were arrows (time flies, as if...)
time flies sure do like those arrows (see banana)
time has wings and flys, then crashes to the ground soon
and more interpretations ....