the bonds of travel
Travel forms tight bonds among people. A passing thought crossed my mind recently: Â I became close (or much closer) with many of my really good friends because of a shared travel experience. It may seem like a pretty obvious thought. And I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to some pretty amazing places in my life. (The experience isn’t limited to friends. I also realized I became a lot closer with colleagues after traveling together, too.)
This yarn of thought then continued unraveling. I began to wonder about life 150 years ago, and what it was then that made people form tight bonds. If the whole escapade of flight and cross country/continent leisure travel wasn’t possible, what was it that formed lasting relationships?
Travel seems to work this way for a number of reasons:
- shared experience – doing anything together provides opportunity to reminisce forever
- prolonged experience – enduring 2+ days of nonstop anything will have an effect
- close quarters – it’s hard to disconnect / find alone time while traveling
- no privacy – it’s hard to pretend to be anything other than what you are when all of the above are happening
It’s hard to replicate these conditions in the average day-to-day, so how do we form the tight bonds (the incredible relationships) that are borne out of incredible adventure in our daily lives? Can we?
(footnote: this is a running theme for me – trying to connect the dots on why people become friends with some people and not with others. expect more on this subject later. also i looked briefly for other writing on the psychology of travel, but didn’t find anything compelling. let me know if you do.)
the road less traveled vs. the road to happiness
One of my recurring reads on the web is geekmba360.com… It’s a well-written blog about post-mba observations from the business & technology world. Recently a post appeared on the site entitled “Five alternative careers for MBAs.” Through it, the author shines a light on places MBAs don’t often surface (non-profits and public education, for example), but would likely benefit from the injection of managerial expertise/potential. (Please hold your “MBAs are responsible for the global financial collapse” comments for another time.)
This got me thinking, and comparing the notes of the author with those of my own, both from recent experience and recent conversation.
The author implies a respect for people who chose “alternative” career paths. At the end, s/he posits that soon, jobs in the federal government are not “alternative” any more because more and more MBAs are taking them. It is perhaps a tongue and cheek sentiment (there’s a smiley face at the end of it), but it’s worth tapping on this point.
My feeling is that pursuit of alternative career paths for the sake of being alternative is foolish. People should pursue things that they *want* to, hopefully because they are paths which are likely to lead them to roles of greatest influence – not merely because there aren’t many others that do.
One of the most positive outcomes of the current financial crisis is that many of my classmates ended up in jobs they might not have tried otherwise this summer. This was partially a function of there being fewer traditional jobs available (banking, consulting, etc.) but also a function of what I think was a re-evaluation of priorities that many people did when examining summer prospects.
It’s been my experience so far this summer that most of the people who are in banking and consulting are on a scale of unhappy to miserable, while those in other fields range from nonplussed to completely enthused by their jobs. This crisis has forced some people to take risks that might lead them to careers of more personal enjoyment and meaningful external impact than otherwise would have been possible.
And if that ultimately means that all 900 people in my class end up “herding” toward jobs in the federal government. Well – I could think of worse outcomes… for them and for the country.
reflecting on Michael Jackson
It’s been very interesting watching the reaction of people to the death of Michael Jackson this week. The world has clearly lost an incredible talent. I don’t think I realized the full scope of his (and his music’s) affect on people until I saw the aftermath of the news on Thursday. Bars all over New York have been playing more Michael Jackson than I’ve heard in the 8 years I lived here before. Cars driving around are blasting MJ. We listened to his music all day at the office on Friday.
When commenting on the role and power of US media/entertainment on international markets, I’ve often told the story of my first night in Tunis, the capital city of Tunisia, in October 2002. We had just finished dinner and were on a balcony overlooking a main boulevard. Shortly after dark, some men came out with a screen and a projector and began projecting Michael Jackson music videos – in the middle of the median. People streamed out from the surrounding storefronts and homes and began dancing in the street – to Michael Jackson.
This was my first time in a place like this – a place that could not have been any more foreign. And yet – here we were, watching people with whom I had almost nothing in common, dance through the streets to some of the very music I had grown up running around my house to, half a world away.
The power of distributed media/entertainment.
Many will spend these days debating the moral character of Michael Jackson – and I imagine history will temper most of these conversations. I’ve read a lot about him in the last few days, but I’m not sure anything struck me as much as this piece by Andrew Sullivan did (via @kydoh):
He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.
