‘Distance and Difference are the Secret Tonic of Creativity’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 02.09.10 | 9:54 AM ET
Another welcome addition to the Why We Travel canon, this one from Jonah Lehrer. He recently wrote about the cognitive benefits of travel in the San Francisco Panorama:
Travel, in other words, is a basic human desire. We’re a migratory species, even if our migrations are powered by jet fuel and Chicken McNuggets. But here’s my question: is this collective urge to travel—to put some distance between ourselves and everything we know—still a worthwhile compulsion? Or is it like the taste for saturated fat, one of those instincts we should have left behind in the Pleistocene epoch? Because if travel is just about fun then I think the TSA killed it.
The good news, at least for those of you reading this while stuck on a tarmac eating stale pretzels, is that pleasure is not the only consolation of travel. In fact, several new science papers suggest that getting away—and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going—is an essential habit of effective thinking. It’s not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it’s about the tedious act itself, putting some miles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night.
Thanks for the tip, Todd.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Dyanne 02.10.10 | 3:12 PM ET
“...travel is about fun…”???
LOL - and the TSA isn’t even the half of it! Indeed, as I’ve often (grimly) joked - whilst racing sweat-sodden through the night, weary and dazed on a 15 hr. bus ride wedged between the seemingly entire population of a medium-size African village and a gaggle of farm animals, whizzing ‘round hairpin mountain turns at speeds to make my teeth clench every 2.25 minutes - with food a hazy memory and a bathroom but a vain, distant hope… I swear that traveling ain’t for the faint-hearted, and surely practiced only by true and loyal masochists. Supremely satisfying, astoundingly fascinating, stupendously educational to be sure. But fun? Don’t make me laugh! ;D
Ah, but is it “...still a worthwhile compulsion?” Oh so resoundingly YES!
Creative tonic for creativity it may well be. But it seems to me that the compulsion to travel is worthy for a far greater reason. The truth is, all of us who travel (yup, even those who whiz luxuriously ‘cross the globe to sip those daiquiris on a far-off beach) are (knowingly or not) each a singular ambulatory member of the global UN. A bonafide Ambassador (for better or for worse) at the very least. Mingling (no matter how rarely) with the vast sea of diverse world peoples, each blathering in their own language, their own distinct beliefs, customs and political bend. Yet hopefully a lone ambassador struggling to communicate - if only by abundant smiles - with local citizens we meet along the trail/at the swim-up bar.
In short, g-help us should the species cease to travel ‘cuz of a few TSA (or dysentery) annoyances. Global warming would cease to be a problem ‘cuz a cultural chill would envelop all the peoples of the earth. We’d all be each in our own separate world, geographically sealed in a cultural Ziplock. Such isolation would ultimately lead only to fear and loathing of “them”, in turn likely encouraging the build up of nuclear arsenals and… Well surely you know the rest of the fairytale.
LOL, well o.k. maybe travel can also be kind of fun. ;)