Everyone wants to be a travel journalist. Well, maybe not everyone. But lots of people want to travel and write about it. I do. And I wonder, why? Traveling is hard. It's lots of work; it's uncertain; it's a messy, complicated way of life. And journalism? Sometimes I get sick with anxiety just thinking about the intrusion, the interviewing, the hours of combing for minute detail. So, my question is, what am I doing? Why do I want to travel and be a journalist? Who in their right mind would pursue things that make them feel out of place, tired and anxious, almost without fail?

Because through both travel and journalism, I'm connecting to the world outside myself, feeling how endless and rich it is. I am learning about others in my community of humans, whether that's a Danish 11-year-old or a door-to-door salesman in Evanston. I have a passage outside boundaries of class, race and country.

That passage is important to me, psychologically. There's a deep loneliness in the reality that we are all individuals, free to choose whatever and however. When I was a kid I remember realizing how trapped I was within one body, that I could know nothing more than being in my own head. And I felt that underneath that limitation was a promise that one day those limits would disappear. Until then, I look for those limits to vanish here on earth.

1/28/2002 06:31:09 PM

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