Traveling, even for just a little time and with just a little stuff, is a terrible nuisance. There are floods that halt trains, computer errors that cancel planes, storms that bring the interstate to a bare crawl; even when those things go right, you'll deal with lost bags, inaccurate maps, rude strangers, uncomfortable sleeping spaces, odd smells, and really terrible food. Language barriers and cultural misunderstandings, jet lag and exhaustion. Oh, and everything costs more while you're traveling. Guaranteed.
And when you're moving - all the stuff to cope with, all the expenses involved, the worry, the breaking valuables, the crushed boxes, the pain of downsizing, and then replacing the things you downsized, and the cleaning of the old place and the new, of packing and unpacking, of learning the layout of a new town, finding new jobs, new childcare arrangements, new friends.
And just imagine what it would have been like before we had trains and planes and cars and credit cards and internet reservations and telephones and GPS - heck, cheap accurate maps, even. The mules would get thirsty, or the cart would break an axle. The cows would drink poisoned water and die (I'm an expert; I lost many a game of Oregon Trail this way). The constant weeks on the road would wear on your family. You'd abandon priceless heirlooms by the roadside. You'd bury children along the way. You'd live for months packed into the stinking hull of a leaky ship. You'd freeze at night, roast during the day. Getting lost would be life-threatening, not just annoying. With no travel guides or online ratings to check out, every decision about buying food, sleeping somewhere, following directions or stopping in a town would be a perilous judgment call.
So why do it? Why bother at all?
At some point in high school I remember learning that people immigrate for one of two reasons: to seek something good or to flee something awful - or both. I wonder, though, if we might be able to look at all the reasons we popularly accept as reasons for travel - boredom, longing for adventure, curiousity, wanting to see a new culture, etc - and think of moving as just another kind of travel. Especially back before travel was a widely available hobby of the middle class. If you were making a modest living but longed for something exciting, new horizons, new faces, new tastes, you couldn't save up vacation leave and book a flight. Maybe the only way to find those experiences would be to pack up shop, sell some assets and relocate - and the relocation itself would be an exciting adventure.
It may be accurate to think about migration is as the push-pull of powerful economic, religious and sociopolitical factors, with personal whims and longings privileges immigrants couldn't afford. Overall, people tend to move away from poverty and war and towards economic opportunities and political stability. But to think this explains immigration and migration is an extreme oversimplification.
The other day I wrote on this blog that Prussia must have been absolutely awful if Montana seemed like a better deal - unless my ancestors just didn't know what they were getting into. But when do we ever?
I've been rethinking that offhand statement. Since I can't ever know their motivations for leaving a known land for an foreign place, obviously I should be careful about my assumptions. And maybe they were fleeing an untenable situation, or seeking what they had heard was a land of prosperity. But maybe, just maybe, they wanted something new and different. The modern era does not have a monopoly on the desire for excitement - I think it would be a mistake to assume past generations were motivated by practicality and self-interest, when our own behavior so often displays impulses best summed up with a shrug and "I don't know, I thought maybe it would be fun."
Or to put it another way: if the only way you could leave your hometown were to move away from it, would you do it? Even if you weren't impoverished or repressed, and you had no guarantee of prosperity in a new town?
And if you don't think you would do it, can you think of anybody you know - any restless personality - that would?
I know I do. The push-pull model of immigration is probably the most accurate way to talk about historical migration patterns, but on the individual level, we should remember to leave room for human impulses and irrational desires.
Without those, who would travel at all?
Seriously, travel is mostly awful. Especially when half the country seems to be flooded, on fire, thunderstorming, tornado-stricken or all of the above. If it weren't for restlessness and curiosity I'd be comfortably well-rested at home right now. AND I'M NOT.
Stupid human impulses and irrational desires.
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