Full Disclosure: this video is not really about traveling. It's about the radical concept of BELONGING—to a place, to a community—and about PERMANENCE, sinking roots, building robust relationships, living in the same place for your entire life.
We—and I'm speaking mostly to millennials and generation Z—don't value these things. Broadly speaking, we value EXPERIENCES. We tend to evaluate the worth and fullness of our lives based on the amount and quality of experiences we have had. Therefore we are obsessed with things like TRAVELING more than any other previous generation, because travel offers the hope of new and powerful experiences, of seeing 'this' and doing 'that,' and having a picturesque Instagram account.
Of course traveling is not bad in and of itself, nor are new experiences. In fact, I think they are pretty great. The problem is that we put MOST, if not ALL of our hope and value in chasing EXPERIENCES, which makes us devalue other things that, I argue, are far more important than transitory experiences. We forget the importance of STABILITY, of finding a place and making it your own. We fail to build lasting relationships. We never create a long history in a single place. Our story is never fully known in a single community that we call OURS.
I'm not really saying that you should never travel. I'm saying that it is not as great or important as you think it is. I'm saying that you should find a place that you can love being, and invest in that place. Belong to it. Leave your mark on it. Build bonds with people that last a lifetime. I'm saying that, if you travel, you must always be focused on COMING BACK. There should always be a patch of ground, a group of people, to which you return. No matter where you go, your destination should always be your village.
In modern society, connection no longer happens as a matter of course, as it once did in premodern societies. Because of our unprecedented resources and technology we can go pretty much wherever we want, whenever we want, if we make sacrifices. We have the option to leave our homes, or if we stay in one place, the option to stay inside, binge Netflix, surf the internet, and ignore the people around us. If we want to carve out a rich niche for ourselves that we call HOME, we have to be INTENTIONAL. That's what this video is about.
Stock footage provided by Videvo, downloaded from www.videvo.net
