“Journeys are the midwives of thought,” Alain du Bottom writes in “The Art of Travel.”
“If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival.”
We take cruises, car trips, package tours, or simply go to new places not only to see something new and intriguing, but also to discover something new about ourselves. New thoughts, new ideas, new ways of thinking about ourselves and the world emerge from visiting new places. We travel to see something we haven’t seen before by broadening our perspective and deepening our self-awareness. We get to see new places as well as see ourselves anew.
I’m a destination speaker who lectures on Azamara cruise lines about the history, culture and local customs of ports of call in the Mediterranean, British Isles, Southeast Asia and Africa. I’ve lived or worked in more than a dozen countries and traveled to more than 40 others. I’m an affiliate associate professor at the Ballard Center for Social Impact at BYU and study the dynamics of social ventures around the world.
I’m traveling and teaching in Japan and Korea for the next month. I’m also visiting with passengers about their experiences: what they see, what they are discovering, what they are seeing that is both usual and unusual in their travels. They talk, I listen.
People travel for many different reasons.
Ardis Petersen has been on 52 different cruises in the past 25 years: some lasting only a few days, others lasting as long as a month. She likes the ambience of a cruise ship more than encountering new places. Still, she is here. Incrementally, she is expanding the borders of her life experiences and finding people and places may not be exactly as she supposed.
“My husband is the adventurous one,” she says. “We’ll go to a local marketplace and within minutes he’ll have a small crowd gathered around him. I don’t like getting bumped into and often back away while he looks for unusual souvenirs or even small treasures.”
Standing only 4 feet 10 inches tall, Petersen is to get overlooked. But she likes it that way. “I don’t want to be noticed, I want to blend in,” she says. “Even when I don’t understand a language at a location, I can figure some things out just by noticing who seems to be taking the lead in a small group, who seems to be particularly knowledgeable about something, who seems to be ignored. All that helps me look at when I do the same things.”
Anne Julien hasn’t traveled as much as Petersen. Since her husband passed away more than 20 years ago, she’s often traveled alone. She went on a world cruise in 2024 for five months and has already booked a second world cruise in 2027.
“I’m 88 years old today,” she says, “and I want to be on a cruise for my 90th birthday. I have some family members join me for occasional segments when they can. I like having them around, but I don’t mind traveling by myself. Its easier to me new people when traveling alone. I don’t need to convive anyone else to visit a particular museum or shrine or castle, I just go.”
Julien worked as a pediatric nurse for 35 years before retiring. Then, she and her husband not only helped with grandkids, they sponsored foster children as well. One of them came from Cambodia, stricken by polio.
“We didn’t know much about him when we sponsored him, but we knew enough that we wanted to help him if we could. Over the years, we tried various treatments. Then, a doctor talked to us about a new kind of surgery. We talked about it for quite a while, then decided it was worth the risks.
It worked! It changed the trajectory of his life. Phi took advantage of every future opportunity that came his way. His life was truly transformed. Eventually, he went to medical school. He became a surgeon. He’s now giving back to others what was given to him.”
Julien took another risk three years ago. At 85, she was at a crossroads. She wanted to travel more but with only a small pension and limited savings, she didn’t have the money she needed for the trips she wanted to take. So, she did what she considered the only sensible option open to her. She sold her house.
“With the equity from my house, I have enough money to travel more,” she says. “I bought a travel trailer and live in it when I’m not cruising and keep it at a friend’s house when I’m gone. I’m doing what I want to do rather than waiting for the day when my family will insist on moving me into an assisted living center. Until that day happens, if it happens, I don’t want to wilt on the vine. I want to be like a rodeo cowboy atop a snorting bull who tells the gatemen “Outside boys. Let “er rip!”
Julien’s niece, Carla, is with her on this trip to Japan and Korea. She has grandchildren of her own but has taken the time to be with her aunt to see how she navigates getting off and on a ship and getting around a new port every day.
“We don’t worry about her. She’s doing what she loves. She’s living life on her own terms, not some prescribed scenario about what ‘old ladies are supposed to do,‘” Carla says. “If she wobbles or falls, we’ll deal with it. If she doesn’t wake up one morning while on a ship, we’ll celebrate a life well-lived.”
Petersen and Julien are very different. But, in their own way, they are pushing back the borders of daily life widening both their world view and their perceptions of what is possible for someone like them. They are living one day at a time in ways that defy stereotypes and reinforce their own values.
Few ways are as helpful in reexamining our mindset than a moving plane, ship or train. New places almost demand reviews of the world and our place in it. Self-assessment is helped along by the flow of a landscape. Perhaps there is no better way to think about heaven or humankind than when we are aided by strangers — as we surely will be — when we travel.