Interlude for More of Lisa's Philosophical Ramblings

Am I a slacker?

This question has bugged me, on and off, throughout my life. There have been times that I’ve kept a truly hectic schedule (such as that nightmarish semester when I was working five jobs), but all in all, I have loads more free time than most of my friends. Some days, when I ditch my editing for a four-hour walk and hang-out time at Taco Bell with my Dad and a sibling or two, I begin to feel as if I should be back home, “being productive.” And when I travel, it’s hard for me to get anything done except the absolute essentials of my job, when I could be writing and developing my career in a more meaningful way. That insecurity gnaws at the back of my mind, whispering, “Slacker, slacker, slacker…”

It’s true that when I’m on the road, I don’t do a lot of what is classified in my mind as “work.” I keep up with my students, blog every day and try to keep a personal journal, but that’s as far as the writing goes. I could be developing and querying articles, writing novels, polishing short stories, seeking new markets, finding niches for new projects— that is the concrete workings of freelance writing, and that is what would launch my career into the future. How could I abandon these crucial activities to go off and spend half my time sitting in air-conditioned houses in various western states with strangers? What’s the purpose of that?

That’s where travel, once again, has a lot to teach me.

Two of the easiest parts of life to lose sight of are purpose and value, and what they really mean. I have to pause, draw a deep breath, and ask myself, “What is more important: career or life?” I have to take a step back from the culture’s expectations. As much as the Frank Capra sentiment insists that “you can’t take it with you,” nobody believes it. Busyness obviously means productivity and value; free time obviously means laziness. I make this judgement all the time, both on myself and others. But what is really valuable in life? What would happen if we took just an instant to consider, seriously consider, the eternal perspective?

Travel is valuable for me. I believe it’s valuable for everyone, if people travel with an open mind and an open heart. It’s not about the places, although that’s a nice garnish on the metaphorical cake: travel, like life, is about the people.

In Washington I met a farmer who belly-dances at Ren Faires in her spare time, a woman in her nineties who fed me chocolate-covered raisins and hot cocoa, a diehard conservative who wants to kill them Injuns, an 18-year-old who had just traveled the world, a lesbian couple who are saving the earth one farm at a time, a Buddhist South Carolinian in search of a home, a Unitarian celebrant who adopted me as her daughter for the day, and a pot-smoking crochet artist who believe aliens keep the moon in place. In California I crossed paths with a bone specialist who taught me about the holocaust, two French women who cooked me ratatouille, sisters from Taiwan who had lived in South America before immigrating to the US, a hostel receptionist convinced all the world’s problems were rooted in wi-fi and soap, and an unstable young man who let me cry on his shoulder at a vulnerable point in my life. In Florida I discovered an Israeli on a six-month trip around a America, a sixty-year-old woman who was willing to tear up the dance floor with me for three hours straight, a Mayan guru who watched TV all day, a Tennessee sky-diver, and three or four guys who kept with them little slivers of my heart. Now, out west, I’ve rubbed shoulders with an artist who lives in a warehouse without plumbing, a suburban family with a stay-at-home dad, a Colorado farmer who showed his love for his grandkids by slamming his palm on the table or popping a blown-up paper bag, six girls sharing a dorm house together, and a young man on the verge of divorce with his military wife. This is only a sampling— I could go on and on and on about the people I’ve met, the souls who have, if only for a minute, brushed against me and left me with the flavor of their essence.

Henry David Thoreau said, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Travel is my way of standing up, of taking in, and of learning more about life and love and spirit than I had ever imagined. Talking to these people, searching out their thoughts, and twisting my head around to glimpse their perspective has been more valuable to me than almost anything else I’ve ever done. Travel is vital to my spirit and my soul, and from those combined sources flow all the wellsprings of true art. I can’t write with integrity without the life that I’m soaking in wherever I go.

So when I’m sitting in the tax office and the representative asks me, “What percentage of this trip was for business purposes?” my response is always, “…Uhm…”

~Lisa Shafter