You know that pervasive storyline that says that travel will transform you, change your life, and help you find yourself? What if that does not happen; have you “failed” at travel?

This essay considers that question, and takes notice of that pressure on travel writers to “create a personal arc of transformation,” pointing out that despite the expectation that travel will transform, “no one ever says who travelers are supposed to be turned into.”

“There are things that extensive travel teaches you, such as how not to be afraid, or at least how to tell the difference between times you should have fear and times there’s no need for it…. Staying at home offers as many opportunities for growth and transformation and brain rewiring and whatever other trademarked terms you’d like to use here. If you’re the type of person who is more scared of staying home than wandering back out there, it perhaps holds more.”

(Via Bookslut)

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