One Million Miles. The One Thing That Mattered.
A Return to Travel — IV
CX0504 29MAY2009 HKGNRT
If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.
- Heraclitus (350–480BC)
“Something has to hurt to have an epiphany.”
“Everyone has epiphanies.
Why do people have epiphanies? Because they are ready for them.”
- Elise Ballard, author, Epiphany: True Stories of Sudden Insight to Inspire, Encourage and Transform
How will you remember to remember when you return home?
- Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: A Seekers Guide to Making Travel Sacred
Is travel something where we can experience the unexpected? 100%. No doubt. Absolutely. And, you don’t even have to try. Get on a train, a plane, a ship and sit back. The unexpected just happens (of course, if it hasn’t happened already). The unexpected happens to me all the time while traveling. The unexpected is exhausting, exhilarating and irritating. But, that’s not the point.
And yet, that is exactly the point of this article. The unexpected.
This is a timeless article, from 2011, on experiencing The Trip of a Lifetime. A few years ago I interviewed about a hundred of the top travel consultants culled from Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler and Travel & Leisure’s Top Travel Consultants annual lists. It was the first time I heard of customers wanting, “The Trip of a Lifetime.” Again, and again. I thought it is a bit of an oxymoron to have more than one “Trip of a Lifetime,” but after the first one, surely there has to be another. I get it.
I feel I have already lived a few lifetimes in this lifetime already.
I get to work in an industry where I actually want customers to have an incredible experience. From the humdrum of business travel to the Trip of a Lifetime-people. Those who cannot afford to take a trip and the people with endless cash (who can also be the unhappiest. I’ve met them). Those leaving their families behind, and those returning after having been gone for years. Kids and elderly. Those excited and those afraid. Each having their own experience.
This piece is an introduction to the experience of life changing travel.
Can we plan it? Can we create an environment, in our travels, where we consciously transform our lives? Is it possible to hit the brakes on where we’re heading in order to find the path that awakens and enlivens us? I believe so.
Is it guaranteed? I don’t think so, but we can come close.
I will study and get ready, and maybe the chance will come.
-Abraham Lincoln
Epiphanies
The boy, Santiago, in The Alchemist had an epiphany. Actually, a few epiphanies. Toward the end of the book, after years of him searching for his treasure, he dug all night for where he believed he would find it. He’s exhausted. Then, attackers showed up forcing him to dig more. “They made the boy continue digging, but he found nothing. As the sun rose, the men began to beat the boy. He was bruised and bleeding, his clothing was torn to shreds, and he felt that death was near.” After they left, “The boy stood up shakily, and looked once more at the Pyramids. They seemed to laugh at him, and he laughed back, his heart bursting with joy. Because now he knew where his treasure was.”
What happened?
“When you meet what you don’t know and understand it.”
- Bill Moyer, in his interview of Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, describing an epiphany.
What is an epiphany, and what is the point?
Elise Ballard is the author and curator of Epiphany: True Stories of Sudden Insight to Inspire, Encourage and Transform. She expands on the dictionary definition of epiphany to include:
a moment of great or sudden revelation that usually changes your life in some way.
Jerry McGuire had an epiphany. Tired and disillusioned with his work, he wrote a 35 page Mission Statement (talk with me if you ever think of writing a 35 page mission statement. I can help you save a lot of time and money). Then, he got fired. Classic.
Elise Ballard interviewed 58 well-known people who had epiphanies and writes each of their stories (great book). As Ballard discusses in her TedX talk, an epiphany is an Aha moment. It may hit you on the spot, or days, weeks or months later. It is a defining moment (although it could be more or less than a moment, in my experience).
I’ve had lots of epiphanies while traveling. Some of the best epiphanies. Simple epiphanies, like staying in my seat, during boarding, on a 5AM flight while the 20-something lady next to me projectile vomited. She was pregnant, scared, tired and going to visit her military husband. She just needed someone to tell her it would be, “OK.” I needed to hear that, then. And Ernie, the 8-year old boy who, sitting in the middle seat, wanted to sit by the window. I saw my own eagerness in him. And the elderly lady in Atlanta who a colleague and I asked to hold a table us while we grabbed dinner for ourselves, and her. She couldn’t afford it. I would want the same for my mother, or son or daughter.
One of my earliest epiphanies was sitting next to the window on a plane landing in Miami one one of my first return trips after moving away. I remembered growing up near the airport. My two younger brothers and I adventured on our bicycles around the airport, climbing on planes no longer useful and rusting away. We imagined how to scrape up enough parts to make our own.
And there are not many times when traveling and the plane lands, or the train pulls into a station, or the ship pulls into a port where I am not awestruck. I travel to have epiphanies. I experience them. I live them. I write about them. I talk about them.
I work in the travel business, not just for the experiences I have, but because I believe that the power of travel changes lives. It has mine. Still does.
Like Elise Ballard writes, the epiphany finds you when you’re ready.
Boarding Passes
What’s a boarding pass? A last name, a first name, a getting-on point, a getting-off point, a date, a reservation number. A few codes.
But really, what is a boarding pass? A record of passage from one place to another? The representation of a contract to board. A rite of passage?
A long time ago, a boarding pass was the ticket cover (an analog concept), with a gate and flight number, possibly a seat number written on with a felt tip marker [Photo]. I have a few of these. Then, the boarding pass became electronic, printed on heavy paper to be sure the right people got on the right plane. Now, mainly, it is something on your phone. And, in some places, it is your face in a security camera at the check-in, at the TSA and at the gate.
I save the ones on my phone, although I’m writing mainly about the paper kind. I have friends who save their boarding passes. My son saves boarding passes. Friends long gone saved boarding passes — their children call me to ask if I want them. Why did they save their boarding passes?
I’ve seen boarding passes used as book marks, hung on cubicle walls, I’ve even used them as playing cards. Yet, what memories do boarding passes hold?
A vacation?
A visit to a family member or friend?
A trip on the Concorde?
On an airline long gone?
To a place long ago forgotten?
Next to a seatmate we’ve bared our soul to (or who bared their soul to us)?
Maybe it was a harrowing experience we lived through.
To some, boarding passes are sacred and become more memorable than the cost of the trip itself.
For nearly 30 years it seems like I’ve traveled more than I’ve been home. When my son was growing up, his favorite present when I returned from a trip was a boarding pass. Not candy. Not post cards. Not refrigerator magnets. A boarding pass. A first class boarding pass was prized more than a coach boarding pass. A foreign airline boarding pass showcased more than one from a US airline. A foreign city was gold. He lined up chairs like an airplane, put boarding passes on each seat to create his own experience on whatever he imagined the journey was.
“What did the airport look like?”
“Where did you get your boarding pass?”
“What was the boarding process like?”
“How clean was the plane?”
“How new was the seat?”
“How small (or big) was the lavatory?”
“Did they serve a drink and food?”
“How attentive were the flight attendants?”
For my son, the trip is what mattered most. Whether I flew to Little Rock or London — the questions were the same. A boarding pass was the evidence.
What is the experience we have when we travel? Some people suffer ‘the journey’ to get to their destination while others could care less where they’re going ~ they’re just happy to be going. At times, it seems, people’s views of travel are often their views of life… journey, or destination.
People travel for all kinds of reasons — for business, vacation, funerals, to go fight a war, to visit families, to get away from their kids, to get away from their parents, to get away from themselves, to find a love lost, to find their self. Or, as Carl Jung put it, “We leave in order to come back.” Watching people travel, and being around travelers so frequently, I see (and also experience) the range of their emotions — happy, sad, lonely, contemplative, despair, fear, excitement.
What I experience and what others experience while traveling is intriguing to me. Those experiences, whatever they are, can be rich and deep with meaning — even a simple business trip. Some learn from those experiences.
Travel Epiphanies
When we’re ready and possibly least expect it, we catch a glimpse of something new. Something that grabs our attention. A glimmer. An idea. A challenge. A struggle. An awareness. A twist. A smile. A pain. Someone else’s pain. An epiphany.
Boarding passes tell us about a journey — a last name, a first name, a getting-on point, a getting-off point, a date, a reservation number. A few codes. And the memories, and maybe the experiences, that go along with it.
Go. Travel. Make it an experience you won’t forget. Save the boarding pass. Look at the boarding passes you have.
More than a piece of paper, a boarding pass is a document of a journey taken.
And I have boxes of boarding passes.
You knew these things about people and places before you left home, but you had forgotten them. This journey reminded you of the sacred rhythms. How will you remember to remember when you return home?
- Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: A Seekers Guide to Making Travel Sacred
