Spring break has arrived for us in the American University. This week I am looking forward to a “stay-cation,” not traveling much of anywhere. When the COVID quarantine gates opened I like many others raced to the airport, having missed travel for so long.
This weekend in the WSJ I read the best article on Travel I have read in awhile- Sebastian Modak’s “Shred Your Bucket List: Why ‘Must-Do’ Travel Plans Are Ruining Your Vacations.” In spite of the headline, it's not arguing to ditch goals- but to ditch certain types of plans to the goals. In the case of travel- the sort of rat race around the world to check off "places I've seen" boxes plan should be shredded.
My parents won a contest with a prize: a trip to Europe, visiting 10 capitals in 10 days. They asked if they could fly over but just stay in Rome for 10 days. I've always thought that was a wise decision (the less rigorous schedule also allowed me to go to Rome with them- as a 6 month old bambino). Yes, they got me to throw a coin over my shoulder at the Trevi, which I’ve been doing ever since (here’s to next year in Roma!).
Some passages from the article touch on topics of philosophical significance. Modak writes (with my emphasis in italics):
…In 2017, Thomas Thurnell-Read, a professor of sociology at Loughborough University in England, undertook a deep dive into the promotion of such lists. We’ve moved away, Mr. Thurnell-Read concluded, from thinking of the bucket list as a way to come to terms with the lives we’ve led. “It has become commercialized and commoditized, and it’s short of any sense of mortality or self-reflection,” he said. “Many of the bucket lists have embedded hyperlinks, so the list is not just telling you what to experience but having you purchase that experience.”
We also give up our individuality, Mr. Thurnell-Read said. “The reality of the bucket list draws people back to a prescriptive list of places and experiences”…
…Of course, you don’t just happen upon the pyramids. If you want to see that marvel of ancient engineering, you need to make plans. The question to ask yourself before doing so is whether you’re conforming to an idea, or choosing what feels personally meaningful and true.For some, visits to iconic spots may help to define a life well-lived. But for others, it will be the unexpected moments too nuanced to make a top-ten list. And the only way we find those, I’m afraid, is hurtling ourselves into the unknown, again and again.
John Rawls, in one of his few passages that contains actual wisdom, talks about an "Aristotelian principle" that we should adopt with life plans- the principle of adjusting plans as we go along, since we grow as people and understand the goals better as we go along. Travel plans ought to incorporate the Aristotelian Principle too; and that’s precisely the example Rawls gives:
...suppose that we are planning a trip and we have to decide whether to go to Rome or Paris. It seems impossible to visit both. If on reflection it is clear that we can do everything in Paris that we want to do in Rome, and some other things as well, then we should go to Paris. Adopting this plan will realize a larger set of ends and nothing is left undone that might have been realized by the other plan. Often, however, neither plan is more inclusive than the other; each may achieve an aim which the other does not. We must invoke some other principle to make up our minds, or else subject our aims to further analysis.
-Theory of Justice, Section 63.
The greater wisdom about plans of life that John Rawls does not appreciate is that plans are only one mode of thinking about how we should live.
A more important mode of thinking about how we should live than prospective plans is RETROSPECTIVE reflection on our life stories, as Alasdair MacIntyre, JD Budziszewski, and Michel Sandel point out.
Here is Sandel on the point in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice:
Unlike the capacity for choice, which enables the self to reach beyond itself, the capacity for reflection enables the self to turn its lights inward upon itself, to inquire into its constituent nature, to survey its various attachments and acknowledge their respective claims, to sort out the bounds - now expansive, now constrained - between the self and the other, to arrive at a self-understanding less opaque if never fully transparent, a subjectivity less fluid if never finally fixed, and so gradually throughout a lifetime, to participate in the constitution of its identity. (p153)
So- before I head out on that next vacation, it will be time to do some reflection as well as some planning- sans bucket list.
Rick Steves had some good advice about travel too: travel through the back door
Also- don't forget what TS Eliot said in 4 Quartets:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."