TRAVEL
Overwhelmed? Open Your Mind to Global Therapists
That impoverished gaucho or bongo drum guy… may hold the key to life
I’m not a coffee-table-book person.
It always just seems a bit pretentious and overly curated, like Martha Stewart or one of the staging experts on some HGTV show required them to be there, collecting dust, to impress guests, but never to be moved or touched.
Plus, they’re heavy and cumbersome, the opposite of downsizing or leaning more toward that minimalist lifestyle.
Yet, today on my coffee table lives a book that isn’t there for display, but for actual use and inspiration: Lonely Planet’s bulky, simply named, The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World.
Let me be clear, I love this book, but not perhaps for the reason you expect.
Sure, the pictures are exquisite and phenomenal. The imagination runs wild, plotting that globetrotting adventure or pondering those exotic locales to check off the ever-growing bucket list.
But for me, that’s not what it’s about. Instead, it’s this:
The Level Playing Field.
Every country in the world — every, single, one — gets the same amount of real estate — two pages. Only two measly pages.
Yep, the United States gets the same two-page prominence as Tuvalu, or say, Togo, along with a few highlights of each nation. Oh France, you may be a nonstop tourist destination, but sorry, try again, you only rate the same two pages as Serbia, Honduras or Moldova.
And this simple concept? It calms and resets the mind.
You’d think it would have the opposite effect, right? A book presenting every country in the world is overwhelming, a banquet feast of places to visit and a reminder that you’ll never, ever have enough time in life. Also, all those religions, those conflicts, those ways of life we may not connect with.
But for me, it’s all about perspective, perspective, perspective.
I had this realization the first time my eyes scanned a previous printing of The Travel Book in the back corner of Barnes & Noble. There I sat awkwardly on the floor, trying to balance this cumbersome tome on my lap, when the pages flipped open to the country Chad, featuring a stunning picture of like 250 camels and some handlers, just hanging out in a watery gorge, seeking shade from the sun.
And my first thought, instantly?
“These people don’t give a SHIT about Kim Kardashian.”
They don’t know or care about our red and blue states.
And they certainly don’t give a rat’s ass if the newest $1,500 iPhone will compete.
In this shady desert scene, these lovely people (and the camels) don’t give a moment’s thought to the must-see movie jammed down our throats, the latest meme clapping back at some political candidate, or that Tesla stock that’s way down.
Somehow that just made me giddy with joy, a stop-in-your-tracks moment where I was reminded of our media’s power in shaping our hourly worries and emotions. Our mood. Our focus. Our headspace.
And that there are other ways to live. We are all products of our environment, what our society places importance on.
A few days later, a friend was visiting. First topic? His concerns with the retirement plan and 401(k) considerations. Should he maybe refinance the house, or try this dividend-paying stock? Knowing he appreciated travel, I grabbed my now-favorite coffee table book and flipped to the page for Namibia, featuring a solo climber ascending a gloriously golden-orange sand dune, then the page with ladies folk dancing in Bolivia.
And we both wondered aloud:
“Do these people constantly worry like we do?”
The U.S. Only. Gets. Two. Pages.
As it should be, as it really is in the world.
We are ALL here on this planet.
There’s none of this first-world, third-world designation here.
No perception that the Northern Hemisphere countries are somehow better than those in the Southern Hemisphere.
The smiling residents of Chile and French Polynesia seem just as content as the hipsters in Estonia or those Turkish women.
Do these world citizens have worries? Oh, plenty. For some, it’s more life-and-death, hand-to-mouth than anything most Americans can imagine.
But the American perspective or way of thinking is only a blip on this planet of world experiences. In this time of 24/7 news cycles, former friends trolling on social media, and Madison Avenue reminding you of all the ways your life is second-rate, embrace this reminder — those guys in the drum circle on page 46, Belize, have their thoughts on simpler things at this very moment. That guy wrangling dusty horses on page 422, Uruguay? He has an interior life you can’t pretend to know. You may want to hang with those Hungarian ladies and ask them the key to contentment.
For sure, other books are better equipped to help you plan a trip, logistically, but The Travel Book can be your welcome distraction, your down the rabbit hole, your through the looking glass — keeping everything in perspective as you disappear into colorful dance and festivals, religious pilgrimages, volcanic vistas, and, truth be told, ordinary life, laborious work and joys and worries that are distinctly not American.
Instant sanity and peace — and an ability to question assumptions and realize there are options and choices, without having to solve all of the world’s problems in this lifetime.
As long as the content, smiling woman in a field is there to greet us (on page 226, Lesotho), I suppose I’ll have to live with being a coffee-table-book person.
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