My Soapbox

I recently heard a statistic that only 15% of Americans have passports, and fewer than that travel abroad with them. I am on month 8 of my total travel abroad experiences, and month 3 of this particular trip (and yes I understand the luxury I have as a young American when I say month 3, though my sister would use the word priority instead of luxury...) and still it's not enough time to see all the things that should be seen, experience all the things that should be experienced in a foreign culture, to learn all that can be learned from other lifestyles and perspectives. We rented a car for a week and saw most of Aveyron, the county I have been living in) and yet when I look at the map of France, I think to myself how little of it I have actually seen.

Perhaps we can really only ever know our homes well, but I think that traveling abroad as an American is an important experience and seeing foreign customs against foreign landscapes with a foreign language being spoken all around gives a new perspective about what is important in life. It's a sad thing about American culture how few Americans travel, but even more sad that so few want to. Traveling abroad is not only a chance to learn about foreign cultures, but to learn more about your own.

It's true that time and time again travelers are subjected to the same questions, especially as Americans: Do you like France? What do you think of the war in Iraq? How do you feel about President Bush? And while this line of questioning happens often, and can become tedious, it helps define one's sense of being an American, and also it makes me realize that we truly are spokespeople for our country, and suddenly it feels even more important to travel and meet foreigners. These conversations also include the line, I know and like Americans, but the government blah blah blah. It is that knowing and liking of Americans, or Frenchmen, or Iraqis, or Turks, or whatever nationality that helps to lessen the gap between cultures. There is no other way to break down the cultural divide which sometimes seems so wide. Jed has said more than once over the past few weeks how much he has come to understand that the French are just people, and people are just people everywhere. This isn't a novel concept, yet it is one which can't be properly understood without being experienced. It's easy to say that the French hate Americans, that they are lazy for shutting everything down for their daily two hour lunch breaks and for not wanting to work more than 35 hours per week. But the truth is, they have different priorities than Americans, and they integrate those priorities (for instance time spent with family) into society at large. Certainly we all have cultural beliefs based from a sense of Nationalism which lead to how we stereotype others, but it isn't often that you come across someone who isn't more interested in meeting and having discussions than they are in condemning you for your nationality. And if the French want you to like their country, it isn't because they feel superior, it is simply because they love it, as much as we love Montana, and even the United States.

Beyond these more academic things, I also believe that being a part of and experiencing something extremely foreign, witnessing another successful lifestyle, has personal advantages as well. American society is far too insular on this point, too full of self-regard, and a good dose of 'foreign travel' is necessary from time to time to keep one's head of the clouds of egocentrism. Is France better than America? Yes and no, and in the opposite ways that America is better than France. It's not about superiority of culture or even lifestyle, it's about the all the pieces making up the whole of the global community. Experiencing other cultures is more than vacation, or even discussion. For me, it's about seeing the world map in my mind's eye as I walk the shores of a river so distant from my own home, seeing the lines I cross on this map by foot, and knowing that no one in the world knows where I am - sometimes not even myself - as I ask myself over and over again, in this foreign land, "Where am I?" Being lost and finding your way out is good for the soul; being lost and learning that lost isn't so bad is good for the soul, and finding out that you were never really lost in the first place is better still.