The year I studied in Göttingen, Germany, we had most of March and April off. Hitchhiking was my main means of travel out of town, though in Yugoslavia I ended up taking trains, busses, and a boat. As you leave Yugoslavia and enter Greece you could go to Istanbul or on to Turkey (which is now Türkiye by the way). I wanted to do both, but I would have to speed through Greece if I also went to Istanbul. Also, I had five or six names and addresses of people in Greece - the friends and the parents of a Georg, a Greek student I knew in Göttingen.
So I vowed to return to Istanbul another time. It’s now 60 years later and I’m finally going to Istanbul. Though I fully realize the Istanbul I will see now, is not at all the same place I would have seen in 1965.
So I’ve been playing travel agent for the last six months. After booking flights, some initial hotel rooms, loading apps, arranging with our house sitter, trying to figure out which eSIMS to use, doing Turkish on DuoLingo, to list just a few things, we’re almost ready. But I do understand why people take package tours and let someone else do all that work.
I’m a bit hesitant to take long journeys these days. We know about carbon footprints, and I was lucky enough to fall into a life that gave me opportunities when I was younger to see much of the world - mostly I had an assignments for an extended period of time (like being a student or a teacher or working/volunteering at an organization.) It’s a great way to get connected into the local community and be more of a traveler than a tourist. You are there long enough to be able to use at least some of the local language.
But as I say, I have had opportunities to live in other countries and learn what I could from those experiences. The world has an endless supply of interesting places to visit. Bit I've also learned there is an endless supply of interesting people much closer to home and I can connect with them to do important things without traveling the globe. I hope to enjoy this trip, learn from it, share it with you and others in my life, and then settle back home and discover the richness of the people and geography around Anchorage that I haven't discovered yet. And revisit those I already know.
But I also realize this trip might tempt me to venture out again. We'll see.
We haven't taken any overseas trips for a while and our Outside trips have been to see family and friends. But the impact does weigh on me.
We all have to figure out how to live reasonably moral lives in the 21st Century. It’s not easy in a system that values money above everything. Of course it isn't either or - moral or not. It's probably better to think about it on a continuum from something like evil to something like virtuous.
The basic standard that I think is reasonable for most people is that they give back to the world more than they got. “Got” doesn’t have to mean being born wealthier than most. Having loving parents is also a gift. Having good friends is too. But in a capitalist society money tends to give you a greater ability to do harm or good.
I don’t know how one measures one's moral balance precisely - one needn’t give back in the currency one receives. Being kind to others is one sort of currency. Contributing to the improvement of other people’s lives also works. Passing on wisdom works too, though many people think what they have to say is wiser than it probably is. All we can do is think about the equation of giving back more than we receive and seriously strive for that everyday.
