COLUMN #37, 19 December, 2001
2001: Lessons from a little planet | Don George

Two weeks before the end of the year, I sit at my desk in Oakland and turn a globe in my hand, trying to get some kind of fresh perspective on the world. Lonely Planet's offices are taking next week off, so this is my last column of the year, and it's a great temptation to try to wrap all the mess of the past 12 months into a neat prose-package and tuck it away on a shelf labeled '2001.' And of course, over the next two weeks, pundits from Paris to Peshawar will be looking back in anger, anguish and ennui and making ponderous pontifications about the planet.

But I'm going to resist.

Partly, I'm just tired of retrospecting. I think - I hope - we've come to understand in a soul-piercing way just how precious life is around the globe and just how important it is for us to fill in the gaps in our personal maps, so that we better understand and appreciate the grand cultural quilt of our world.

And partly, pontificating seems somehow profane to me when so many people have already made the most important pronouncements with their lives. But I do think it's important to heed Candide and put my own garden in order, so I'm focusing on a very personal world instead.

I launched this column on April 10, and since then we have journeyed together to Los Angeles, Melbourne, Ayers Rock, the Croatian island of Rab, Yosemite and Point Reyes in Northern California, Dubrovnik, Connecticut, Ko Samui, New York, the Japanese island of Shikoku, San Francisco, Naples and Las Vegas. We've talked with Peter Mayle and Jan Morris, swapped ideas about the most humane way to deal with beggars and about the new world of travel after Sept. 11, and in general shared our travel piques and passions. In this respect, it's been a very good year.

I have learned, once again, that the traveler's world works through everyday people - the shopkeeper and the waitress, the front desk clerk and the ticket-taker, the cabbie and the local who tells you to take this road and not that one. They don't get any attention, but they are the true hidden treasures of the road.

I have learned, once again, to slow down and pay attention. I've learned that sitting and watching and absorbing in an anonymous café can reveal infinitely more than rushing through a world heritage town with a mental tick-off list, and that an hour in front of a single painting can teach more than an afternoon dash through a museum.

I have learned, once again, to read local publications and watch local TV to expand my sense of the world and to remind myself that what is taken for granted in one culture is inconceivable in another, and that what one culture treasures, another culture ignores and still another abhors.

I have learned, once again, to be grateful for the International Herald Tribune, the Asian Wall Street Journal and CNN - not because I always need to know the news of the larger world, but because they are there when I do need them.

I have learned, once again, to be attuned to local beliefs and practices, and to honor and respect them even if this means denying myself something I have wanted for a long time.

I have learned, once again, that persistence pays.

I have learned, once again, that one person's paradise is another's cliché.

I have learned, over and over again, that my life's drama is for the most part a comedy - and that I lose something special if I forget to laugh at my own misadventures.

I have learned that money is relative and that a good night's sleep and a decent meal are really all I require on the road; all the rest is symbolic self-inflation.

I have learned how incomprehensibly big the world still is - and how small it can instantaneously become, transformed by a little gesture of kindness or compassion or connection.

And I have learned, once again, that I have so much more still to learn - and that the greatest gift of all is fellow world citizens like you, who are willing to share your knowledge and your passion in person, in emails, and in Thorn Tree posts.

I have learned that the globe I hold in my hand - it's your globe, too. Thank you for journeying with me so far; I look forward to resuming our adventures in 2002! Until then, I wish you a holiday rich with peace, goodwill and wonder.



  posted by spidergrrl @ 6:52 AM