About fear of solitude

The next month of my life is going to be incredibly chaotic, so I’m not sure when else I’ll be able to relate my grand travel plans for the European continent. But I have a plan. Oh, yes. I know that at least one of my friends will be in the general vicinity of Europe, so they should listen up and do the math to see if our itineraries overlap at all. Maybe we can meet at the top of the Eiffel Tower or something equally trite.

I leave Vienna for Prague on Friday with Kelly and the gang, for what will likely be a six-day tour of interesting parts of Eastern Europe. After that I’ll return to Vienna alone (!) for probably two or three days to say last goodbyes, steal something commemorative from my landlady, mail stuff home, and prepare for the burliest part of my journey. Here it is, laid out in harsh letters like the epitaph on a gravestone:

June 12: Fly from Frankfurt to Rome
June 17: Fly from Rome to Barcelona
June 22: Fly from Barcelona to Paris
June 24: Fly home

Kelly and I are going our separate ways somewhere near Prague. She’s in Europe a few weeks longer than I, and so has markedly different plans, such as exploring beaches in Croatia or Greece, before heading west. I’d like to see more of the East as well, but simply don’t have time – it’s Western Europe now or possibly never, so I’m choosing “now”, although it means bumming around Europe by my very lonesome for two weeks, a prospect which frankly terrifies me. I’m currently negotiating the purchase of a classical guitar to take with me, not because my music ensemble at home needs another classical guitar but because Pablo Esperanto will stay with Kelly and I need one, right now and until I leave this continent, like Linus needs his blanket. Everyone’s friendlier when you have a guitar slung over your shoulder, no matter how many days’ crumbs have accumulated in your beard. Without the courage it lends I don’t know if I could bear to board the first plane of the many I’ll be taking.

Here is the fact of the matter: I haven’t been alone for two weeks a single time in my entire life. Ever. There’s always been friends and family swarming around me like the cloud of dust around Pigpen, even when I didn’t want them there. I don’t know where the Peanuts references are coming from either, so don’t ask. In any case, I have no idea what effect my loved ones’ sudden absence will have on my sanity, but chances are it won’t be entirely positive. Why, then, am I striking out on my own in the face of these fears? Part of the answer is Kelly’s and my separate priorities, but at least as weighty a factor is a willful desire to conquer the fear which made me consider skipping the West and tagging along with her around the Aegean coast like a lapdog.

Everyone says that travel is broadening, and I always assumed they meant that seeing more of the world widens one’s perspective of it, and of one’s place therein. But after travelling for two months, “seeing the world” has been the least growth-stimulating experience I’ve had. Am I more of a person for visiting a museum, for gawking at yet another ancient tourist attraction, for paying €3 for a tour of the catacombs under Stephansdom? I’m not sure that I am. I was apprised of these things’ existence long before I ever witnessed them firsthand, and isn’t my net gain of “perspective” the same either way? Some might argue that no, it isn’t, but I would shoot back, “OK, fine, but if I can’t feel the difference, is it there?” Seeing things is cool, and I’m glad I have; but if that’s all there is, why not buy a postcard? Will depth perception make all the difference to you that a vivid-color three-by-five posterboard represenation couldn’t? And if it does, hasn’t Thom Yorke reminded us time and again that “just cuz you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there”?

No, I’ve grown on this trip certainly, but the catalyst hasn’t been the scenery. I’ve grown by flying to a new city and country, sight unseen, where I speak not a word of the language. I’ve grown by accepting rides on the Autobahn from whoever will stop, regardless of how much common language we speak. I’ve grown by approaching total strangers and striking up conversations and insisting “Wir mussen nur auf Deutsch sprechen” although I’m flatly incapable of doing so, by rocking out on the guitar with people I don’t know and will probably never see again to chord progressions I’d never before imagined, by puzzling my way home at 3am down dark alleyways in the pouring rain with a reeling step and a soaking map. I’ve grown, in short, by doing things that terrify me more than you can guess.

I’m ready to try a few more.

If you never leave your comfort zone, how can it ever grow?