Bouger bouger*

A lot of people in my grad school program have spent some time outside of the States, and there is certainly a little bit of weird competitiveness about it.  One day a few of us were talking about our respective peripateticness (OMG so not a word) and a really nice girl said something like 'Oh I love how many of us have traveled - it makes us so interesting!'

My first thought was 'Damn, I have known some seriously dull people overseas.'

This fetishization of travel as a good in and of itself - and the concomitant assumption that the more you've traveled, the more of this good you've acquired, and the better you are - strikes me as irrational.  If you're a drip, it doesn't matter how many places you've been; if you're cool, it doesn't matter if you've never left your hometown.  If somebody starts out with limited imagination, empathy, humour, and capacity for analytic thought, then no amount of changing his/her whereabouts is going to induce these qualities.  I'll concede that interesting people may be more likely to travel, but in that case whatever makes you interesting is a pre-existing condition - not something brought on by having your passport stamped.  Also, a whole bunch of other conditions have to be met for travel to be something you can engage in at will - no major family obligations, usually a college education, enough financial ease that keeping the wolf from the door isn't your first priority, etc.

* I don't think I've mentioned for a few months that I love Magic Systeme.  I love Magic Systeme.