What is our Motivation?

Why do we travel? It is a good question, though almost impossible to answer. Think about it, every person travels for a different reason. When you get on the plane, you may be sitting next to a guy that is flying to a convention in Las Vegas. The person that is across the isle is flying to her weekly meeting in Chicago. Motivation is a funny thing.

Sadly, the majority of my travel has been with work recently. So my motivation for travel has been, well, lacking. My motivation for going somewhere has actually been just to get it over with. Isn’t that sad? A person that loves to travel, has that kind of motivation. Where I use to have mixed feelings about the end of a trip, happy to see family/friends and sad that the trip is over, now I am just overjoyed that the trip is over. When I am at the location, I try to take advantage of the situation. I go out to eat, take walks and read about the location that I am going to. Let’s be honest, it is not the same.

Though my motivation for fun (with the family and friends) travel has changed as well. I use to travel for the adventure of travel, that is not necessarily the case anymore. I can remember one of the first times I traveled to Europe. I was 18 years old and went there with one of my best friends. We had two weeks to “see” Europe (I do not want to get into a discussion about the merits of traveling in such a matter, at the time it was perfect. Today I would not travel in such a matter, back to the story) before we had to start working in Switzerland. We traveled all over the place. For the two weeks, I think that we stayed at a hostel/hotel only two nights. All the other nights we slept on trains or in train stations. It was part of the adventure of it all, besides, it makes some great stories that we still laugh about when we get together (like the Naples train station where my friend was terrified about the rats. We agreed that we would sleep in shifts, 1 hour each. After 40 minutes he would wake me up and let me know that his hour was up).
Today it is not the adventure, though it is still part of it. Even on business trips the adventure of it is part of it. Today it is more about escape. Not so much escape from life, though escape from the bear trap I call work is always nice. So I am not really sure what the escape is from. If I travel, I want to travel with my loved ones. So it is not an escape from that. What are we trying to escape then? Or is not really wanting to escape at all, but the pursuit of a goal, dream, what? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I love traveling. The thing that I love even more is the idea of travel. It sounds so glamorous, doesn’t it? The idea of going to Barcelona and strolling (because one only strolls when they are traveling or are newly in love) down La Rambla is a picturesque thought. Though in reality La Rambla is a haven of con artists and is is pouring down rain in Barcelona right now. Those details do not matter. The fact that it is probably going to rain does not really matter all that much in the planning. Instead you are thinking that you will be going to the Picasso museum and then go out to eat tapas.
Now I am just rambling on, again. Basically, I can honestly say that I do not know what motivates us to travel and see. Maybe it goes back to our primate days when we followed the food around. Whatever it is, I am glad that we do. Being a tourist in your own town can be great, but it is even better being a tourist someplace that you have never been before.