The philosophy of the good traveler: Mental preparation
Mental preparation takes many forms; however, the point of concern herein focuses on warding off culture shock. In any international adventure one of the most important preparations is to mentally brace for culture shock. It is real, and it is very powerful. Unfortunately, airport customs doesn’t help you in this department!
If – like the good traveler – you wish to fully mitigate culture shock’s vibrations, you must learn to love the cliché and expect the unexpected.
If we can agree that the point of travel, perhaps like the point of photography, is to see it all, then the good traveler, like a war photographer, must somewhat dull himself to the bite of the world so as to still his soul and better enable himself to capture those National Geographic shots. Let me explain.
I once was offered a chance to travel to India.
“That sounds amazing!” said I.
“You couldn’t handle it,” my Indian friend replied coldly. “Your American heart is too big. Could you just nonchalantly pass through crowds of starving kids with missing limbs begging for food or spare change, knowing full well that if you stop to give to one the rest will surely assault you viciously? Could you face that much pain and walk away unaffected? You must harden your heart if you ever wish to come to my country.”
On the road you must expect to have your ethics challenged.
By no means is China a bad place to visit. But the truth is if you truly wish to explore, expect every day to see whorehouses thinly disguised as massage parlors, destitute heart-wrenching poverty, disease, pollution, malnourishment, overwork and child labor.
The good traveler steels himself beforehand against all these realities so that he doesn’t implode on the road.
The best philosophy is a cliché, a good offense; tirelessly research your destination beforehand; find out the who, what, where, when, why, how, the laws, the customs, the history, the culture, the etiquette, everything. Look online at the U..S travel advisories. Or else too late you just might find that when in Rome, the Romans do things offensively contrary to your conscience.
The bigger danger of culture shock lurks not on the outside though, but in the shadows of your heart.
In part, traveling internationally is the thrill it is because it allows the traveler to experiment with the parameters of his self, the often considered self-evident axioms which most take as fixed and true.
You see, in Lake County you know who you are, right? You work that job. You have those friends. You eat that food. You often go to those places. You do those things. You associate with those people. Your fellow Americans understand you when you speak. They get your references. You know all the rules and you can tell me stories about each street. In your zone, your personality isn’t in question.
But alone, on the road, abroad, in a foreign country, the stimuli change, and slowly so do you …
At first it might be startling to find that when in England, for example, you need first look right, and not left, before crossing the street, for the Brits drive on the “wrong side of the road” across the pond. Strange, you think, that’s not how we do things …
In Munich, you then might be a little intimidated when you see your amber beer coming in a stein the size of your thigh. I’m used to 12-ounce bottles of Bud Light, you think, but this isn’t half bad!
What inspires a smile? While back home you may have been the class clown, in Japan you find your pranks are considered plain puerile. It dawns on you then, that part of you is no longer valid. You aren’t funny with a capital “F” you are funny, here and there. Watching Japanese television only drives home the fact …
But things actually start getting scary when you realize that it isn’t just your common sense and tastes that are more or less invalid in foreign places, but you yourself … That empirical understanding of your self you once held slowly fades away as you travel from place to place.
You’d always thought yourself rather fetching but in Korea you are told that you are without a doubt unattractive, too hairy, too fat, too large in size to be considered good looking, except perhaps as a monkey’s mate – while conversely – much to your delight – in rural China they marvel over your relatively perfect orthodontia.
And so the impossible mission soon becomes clear: to find out who you really are and what you truly believe about yourself.
You begin to wonder, what about me is universally valid? What bit of me might lie in the center of all the nation’s many Venn diagrams? And so you quest on, spurred by your internal debate.
Wishing to mitigate culture shock as much as is humanly possible, the good traveler mentally attends to these eventualities just as earnestly as he makes sure he hasn’t forgot his toothbrush.
• Philip Lenczycki is a Lake County resident studying abroad in China. He is a blogger for the Lake County Journal. Contact him at lcjedit@lakecountyjournal.com.
