Miles and miles and miles in their shoes
Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 8:43PM 
Um, no thanks. Too tiring.
I was admiring a friend's photograph album last week. She and her family had spent five weeks in Europe and the pictures were of gorgeous places like Borton on the water in the Cotswolds, a tiny French village in Provence, the canals in Venice and the Vatican.
The discussion got on to travel and someone asked me if I'd travelled much, seeing as how I grew up overseas.
"Yes, as a child," I answered. "And then when I was 18 I did a three month tour to Pakistan and Europe."
"Oh, marvellous," they gushed. "You mustn't have wanted to come back."
"Actually, quite the opposite," I said. "It was as much as I could do to not change my flights and head back to Australia."
And then I said it. Third Culture Kids and Mish Kids, you of the multi-continent, never ending plane ticket brigade, beware. What you are about to read may shock you to your core.
I said: * "I don't really enjoy travelling." *
Yes, it's true. I could quite happily live for a long time without going overseas or heading off to exotic places. And while I won't say I'll don't WANT to go anywhere, I certainly don't hanker after it like many of my peers.
Here's the reason I don't enjoy travelling too much. It's just too exhausting. And I don't mean jet lag and time differences and long haul flights, although given my propensity to go to bed before 11pm every night because I know I'm just a whole lot grumpier in in the morning if I stay up, you could be forgiven for thinking that's the reason.
The real reason is that travelling to new places makes me emotionally exhausted.
I'm not sure if other people are like this, but I am constantly trying to see the world from other people's points of view. That old proverb about 'walking a mile in another man's mocassins' has been something that I have taken to heart. I have never lacked the ability to see things from another perspective. I constantly try to imagine myself as another person, living and feeling and deciding their lives, feelings and decisions.
I have done this from the age of at least seven, when I could read proper books with complicated characters. When I'd walk into the kitchen at the age of 10 and say in a completely serious, tragic tone, "I believe my childhood is over," my mum would roll her eyes inwardly and say, "OK, what book have you been reading this morning? Your childhood isn't over. Now go outside or I'll make you clean up your room."
It doesn't stop at books. When I go to the city and drive through different suburbs or walk across a street with different looking people, immediately I'm imagining their lives and their backgrounds and trying to walk in their mocassins. It's almost impossible for me to just stay in my own skin. I'm always 'trying on' other lives for size to see what they are like.
A trip to the city exhausts me. Too much imaginative empathy is tiring. Imagine how it would be to head to a whole different country and culture!
I suppose I'd like to think that this bizarre habit of mine is useful in some ways. Perhaps it gives me an insight into characters for stories. I think I'm a reasonable listener and asker of questions because of it. It is tiring, however, and sometimes I forget how to be myself.
Perhaps one day I'll build a little plastic bubble around myself, leave the empathy at home and venture out to see some sights. The Caribbean sounds good, as does Europe, England and Pakistan. Or even just good old Tasmania.
Reader Comments (2)
This was such an interesting post. Saw it the other day but finally am reading, and re-reading, and re-reading again! I think I get this. For me it is this: When you live in a place you learn daily life, you live daily life, you learn how to make life work for you and watch yourself change in the process. When you travel, you are a tourist and being a tourist after having lived in a place is exhausting. Everytime I go back to Cairo it's the same - I think, I don't just want to visit. Visiting is exhausting. I want to live here again as part of the fabric of the city.
I too am overcome with empathy - it's one of the reasons that becoming a nurse was so difficult for me. I had to learn to channel the empathy away from paralysis and into a place of concrete helping a patient. I think it's the artist in you that wants to walk and live in others shoes, and who better to do it? You are a writer and creator - you can express what others are in no position to express. This is getting long but I loved the post and the thoughts it evoked.
Interesting! I know what you mean about having to intentionally switch intense empathy off... I find it comes out more in worrying about people who I know are having a tough time, or guilt in spending money when I know others are struggling. I don't find it at all when I'm travelling although I do get overwhelmed by how much there is to see and do in a new place - overstimulation of colour, sights and sounds without enough rest.