Comments on: Existential Migration: Is Travel An Existential Need?

By: You Ain’t Going Nowhere

You Ain’t Going Nowhere — Sun, 30 May 2010 17:55:18 +0000

[...] about a predetermined destination. Sometimes the trips nowhere are the most memorable ones. Ever traveled for travel’s sake? It’s a good way to roll. VIDEO CREATED [...]

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By: Melissa

Melissa — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:39:50 +0000

Thanks for the interesting article! For me, traveling and migrating has never been the source in itself of any “insconsolable loss.” I’ve been down, alone, heartbroken – but no more than I would be in any other place if I had not migrated. I share the human longing to belong, but find that desire in a less physical sense. As Nick pointed out, with today’s technology, proximity is just one of many considerations when creating your support system and maintaining friendships – we have all sorts of choices, for better or worse. Maybe it’s just the independence talking, but it’s enough to have a few strong bonds with those I’ve met along the way, and to know that there is always potential to meet more people trying to answer these questions.

To me, belonging for most non-travelers sort of implies a physical routine of comfort, which implies having to limit your exploration of things for the sake of staying within that comfort zone. I hate sounding like a hippie, but it really does seem to come down to redefining belonging in a less physical sense if you don’t want to lose your mind abroad.

As Pico Iyer put it, “…it does involve, for some of us, the chance to be transnational in a happier sense, able to adapt anywhere, used to being outsiders everywhere and forced to fashion our own rigorous sense of home. (And if nowhere is quite home, we can be optimists everywhere.)”

And his follow up: “I am not rooted in a place, I think, so much as in certain values and affiliations and friendships that I carry everywhere I go.”

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By: Nietzsche's gold

Nietzsche's gold — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:28:19 +0000

Thank you Greg for your inspirational piece. You know, it is so interesting that I am a couch potato existential migrant. I yearn to travel. I read about travel. I feel part of the globalised world and yet I go nowhere. Home is here but I am pulled elsewhere to other homes, other lives that I will never have. Do I count?

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By: Oh MatadorU, How I Adore You!

Oh MatadorU, How I Adore You! — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:49:47 +0000

[...] Okay, so you’re all thinking I might be biased (just a smidgeon), considering I now work with Matador Network as an associate editor. And yes, I’m an affiliate, so clicking that beautiful banner in the ad column will help your fellow ginger out tremendously. But I even gush about Matador to my friends while we’re out having drinks. My friends will be checking out men’s butts and I’m all, “Dude, I read this fascinating article today about travel being our existential need.” [...]

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By: late_stranger

late_stranger — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:13:50 +0000

Wow… I’m a teenager now, and Alan’s mental situation seems a lot like mine, only stronger. This is really interesting – I’m glad I’m not the only one.

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By: Sammi

Sammi — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:15:10 +0000

Thanks Greg. This is a very thought provoking article.

I believe I am going to one day become an existential migrant. I have lived in the same town for all of my 22 years, and fully intend to move abroad once I’ve earned a degree. It’s the goal that I am completely determined to achieve and the focus I seem to need to get through normal everyday life. It makes the mundane manageable

I cannot help but wonder about the type of person this condition is predisposed to. Reflecting upon myself, I have a strong need for independence and freedom, and I get bored very quickly. It’s this boredom which I think to be a strong factor. There isn’t one country that I’m drawn to; I plan to live in several countries, spending a few months/years in each. The novelty of frequently discovering and experiencing a completely new culture, I believe, will be fulfilling. But as mentioned above, it will come at a price.

Also, I get the feeling that the internet will play an integral role in my future travels. It will be the one constant which will stay with me that ties me to the people I leave behind.

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By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:28:22 +0000

Thanks for this insightful and thought provoking article, Greg.

As someone who has been an expat for much of his adult life, I can relate to what you are saying. I’d like to add two points.

Firstly, I think there is an itch of dissatisfaction in many of our lives. Perhaps it is an intrinsic part of the human condition. Certainly in Britain, I think many people of my generation (I’m 31) are slightly lost. No longer religious, and dissatisfied with consumer culture, finding meaning in the daily grind is difficult. Add to this the ‘cult of the individual’, and it’s very easy for the foot-loose and privileged to cut ties to home, and seek meaning and adventure and exoticism elsewhere. Whether that actually works, is another question ; )

Second, it seems we are becoming increasingly less tied to place. This isn’t just about globalization, it’s about how we interact with others. Many of us spend lots of time in the virtual space of the Internet. We can connect with people all around the world, that we don’t even really know. Ironically, I probably spend more time interacting with people I know through twitter, than emailing and talking to my “real friends” back in Britain, and elsewhere. Perhaps that just makes me a very sad, and deeply unrooted individual!

I remember reading that we become friends with people simply through proximity; that it’s not actually anything to do with shared interests and outlooks, as such, but is simply down to sharing time. It seems social media could be changing this.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 10 years, it’s that upping and leaving for pastures new is in some ways a stop-gap. It may temporarily scratch that itch of dissatisfaction, but it doesn’t kill it. Perhaps it is an internal existential migration that we really need.

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By: Eric Boehling

Eric Boehling — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:42:43 +0000

Greg, I think you’ve hit upon a fundamental piece of the traveler’s quandary by describing the existential dilemma as a “mix of inconsolable loss as well as perpetual adventure and self-discovery.” I don’t personally match your case study’s longstanding wanderlust–until age nineteen I had no desire (but rather, an aversion) to leaving my comfort zone: my home town, my tight group of friends, my familiar routines. But for several reasons I pushed myself to spend a year of study abroad, and those nine months completely reversed my approach to the outside world and to being viewed as an outsider. I’m writing this comment from my current, though impermanent, home in Cambodia, and my American hometown is nowhere on the foreseeable agenda. Thanks very much for illuminating this common but rarely discussed source of ambivalence.

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By: Daryl

Daryl — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:37:09 +0000

Thank you Greg, that is such an interesting article. I can vividly remember thinking and feeling from the age of seven “I don’t belong here”. My family were, and are, great. I don’t have a problem with them at all, I just don’t belong there. I left my home country (the UK) at 22. I returned six or seven years later and stayed for another seventeen years but all the time knew I was there only because there were some things I had to do. One of them was to go to university, where I studied ethics. After that I stayed on to study for a PhD and the subject of my thesis? Globalisation. The world was never so big to me. I felt like I belonged everywhere and nowhere.

I’m living in Korea at the moment and feel completely at home, and a complete foreigner. Depending on the day you ask, I could give you a multitude of reasons why I’m here. I meet so few others like me – many are young singles having an experience before heading back to a predictable life. I’m not one of them. I’ve been married, had children, had a career – but still find myself drawn to moving on and moving on. It’s not just drifting. I worked as an astrologer for a few years, studied Jungian psychology and then broader philosophy and even taught Religious Education. I settled. I suppose. on Satre and the conviction that there is no meaning to life other than what you make for yourself. I would love to know more about your studies.

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