“Any man is old when he’s 36.” —Leon Spinks
It’s a funny quote, that one. Leon Spinks was on the verge of fighting a 36 year-old Muhammad Ali when he said it. It’s the kind of thing you say when you’re a kid, and the kind of thing that seems more ridiculous the older you get. I’m sure, a few years from now, the idea of being old at 36 will seem appropriately ridiculous to me. But that’s the conundrum of the aging process: no matter how old you are, you’re the oldest you’ve ever been.
Right now, sitting at the year in question, on the verge of a cross-country trip, and despite all my experience traveling, I find myself terrified. I’ve tried to reason with that fear, and I find I make a good case. First off, I’m in a better position financially than I’ve ever been. I’ve spent the last year and a half paying off the last of my debt and managed to accrue enough savings to take this trip and get home comfortably. Secondly, I’m in good health (I had some major dental work done, but that’s all behind me). And third, I love my job (tour guide), whose seasonal nature affords me plenty of time to take off and travel.
So where did this fear come from? And why does it feel so new?
I’ve been sitting with this for a while, trying to parse it out, and I’ve come up with four reasons. All of them have to do with where I am in life, and none of them have to do with a career. I know I’m not old, but I’m passing out of my youth, and if I want to continue traveling for the rest of my life, what does that mean going forward?
I know that a lot of this has to do with losing people I love in the last few years, and the realization that…
1. I want to see my living family as much as I can while they are still alive.
It’s been a little over three years since my mother died. We had a very difficult relationship and I am still coming to terms with the fact that we will never be able to repair the rifts that existed before she passed away. Losing a parent is one of those transformational moments in a life. Until it has happened to you, it is impossible to know what its effects will be.
Me and my mom, at our best.
I lost my grandfather a few months earlier. He and my grandmother have been two of the more sustained, positive influences in my life. Earlier that same year, my father was diagnosed with cancer, which he, thankfully, beat to the ground. He’s a healthy man these days, but during that time I saw him suffer with pain I’m not sure I would have been able to endure.
It was a bad year.
The thing that made that year tolerable was my ability to make the time I needed to be with them. In the case of my grandfather, I was able to spend several of his final months taking care of him, sharing stories and playing him music. I was able to be present for my father at the end of his radiation treatment, to sit with him in the audience at my brother’s wedding. And while I didn’t have a lot of time with my mother before her death (which was sudden), I was still able to speak, albeit with difficulty, at her funeral.
So what happens if these things start to go down and I’m on a six month jaunt around South America? More importantly, am I willing to sacrifice time with people I love in order to appease my own desires? If so, how much? That’s obviously a flawed way of looking at the situation, but fear isn’t about logic, and those losses at the center of my life kicked this fear up to a level I couldn’t have imagined 15 years ago. And the truth is I want to share the love I have with the people I care about while I can.
But it’s not just about the family I have. It’s also about the family I want. Which leads me to my second fear…
2. I am afraid I’m running out of time to have a family of my own.
This one didn’t really hit me until my last birthday, because I am now officially older than my dad was when I was born. I never even thought about being too old to be a father before. And honestly, I think it’s way too early for me to worry about that now. The thing is, if I’m traveling constantly (as I hope to do in the coming years), that doesn’t necessarily leave a lot of room for a stable relationship, let alone raising a child. I know there are couples out there (and even solo travelers) who go around the world with their kids, but how do I even get to that point if I’m not in one place long enough to cultivate a healthy relationship?
I’ve been divorced once, and it’s not an experience I recommend. It’s certainly not an experience I’d like to repeat. If I’m going to dig in for life with someone (and even talk about having a kid), I’d like to have plenty of time to figure out how to work out the flaws in our connections. This certainly means I’d have to be with someone who likes to travel as much as I do, and I like that idea. Back to back, us against the world. It’s a romantic notion. But if I’m moving around too much to develop that connection in the first place…you get the idea.
As for the age issue, I know I still have plenty of time to become a father, biologically speaking. I just don’t know if I want to be 70 when my kid graduates high school. I know people do this, and probably handle it very well. I just don’t know if I could.
And maybe that’s all putting the cart before the horse. Even if I did have a family, and even if they did like to travel, we wouldn’t have anywhere to land, because…
3. I don’t own a home, and travel could make it more difficult to change that.
This is going to be a dilemma for me in the next few years.
In my 36 years, I’ve lived in ten different U.S. states and one foreign country (France). I’ve moved over 40 times in my life. I haven’t lived at one address for two consecutive years since I was 17.
This is the kind of existence I’ve always enjoyed. I don’t own much, and there are only a few items (my mother’s guitar, my dad’s leather jacket) that I’d be truly devastated to lose. I’ve never been tied down to possessions, and by extension, I’ve rarely felt tied down to one place. But at a certain point, you realize that having a place to come back to, a safe harbor to point your ship, might be a good idea.
But where?
Right now, I live in New Orleans. Not a lot of people get to live in their favorite city, and the gift that I have in living here is not lost on me. New Orleans is wonderful. Exciting, thrilling, fascinating, alive. I feel at home here. But the truth is, as much I love the city, it exhausts me. I’m not alone on this. Many people I know have a very volatile relationship with this place. I’ve maintained for a while that one of the secrets to living here is getting out once in a while. It helps you maintain perspective. In that sense, it’s a perfect city for someone who likes to travel.
But could I stay here (or anywhere, for that matter) for the rest of my life?
It’s that question, combined with my history of movement, that keeps me from plunking down the first payment on a house, which in turn keeps my roots from really taking hold here. That’s the way I’ve grown used to living, and as a friend of mine pointed out recently, changing that (as in buying a house) would be a fundamental change in my way of engaging with the world.
A place worth sitting still for.
Am I ready for this? I might be, but I’m still not sure, and much like my concerns about having a family, I’m worried that if I take too long to make a decision, that will become a decision in itself. And this highlights my biggest fear of all, which is that…
4. I’m afraid my need to travel just a cover for me to avoid responsibility.
This is where it gets dark, where doing something I love begins to sound (in my own head) like a childish compulsion. It’s this ugly thing that’s at the bottom of all of my questions: this fear that my desire to travel is really just a smokescreen for my desire to never grow up. No responsibility. No home. No family. Just a passport with a lot of stamps. It sounds lonely when you say it like that, and I have been assured by many people (some of them in my own head) that this is exactly what is in store for me.
There’s a Buddhist expression that I quoted often during my divorce: “Leap and the net will appear.”
I believe that. The question for me is, which way is the leap? Am I risking more living a life filled with travel, which is familiar, and closer to the life I’ve always lived? Or am I risking more by settling down and letting my roots flourish, which is a radical departure from the way I’ve lived up to this point? Does greater risk mean a better life? Does a shift in my way of being indicate maturity, or surrender? Which direction is giving up? Which is going forward?
I don’t have answers here. Only questions. In one week I will begin a two month excursion around the country. I will still be filled with these same doubts and fears when I walk out the door, get in my truck and go. I know I will. And I will go anyway.
I need to, I tell myself. I need to.
11 comments
Having a permanent home is not an end of something, it’s a release. Knowing that there’s a guaranteed place to return to, in a city that you love, can only free you from an underlying fear of dispossession. A small condo, a pied a terre, would suffice, and would give you a sense of grounding, of proprietorship, of substance, that could anchor your travels to a specific place, however distant. And, who knows, there might be someone to occupy it while you roam, someone to come home to.
Travel gently.
You’re the best, Tom. Great to hear from you.
What you said is what I remind myself of in the better moments. We’ll see how I’m feeling at the end of this summer trip. I suspect I’ll be more in line with that way of thinking. But first, the road.
Be well, amigo.
I agree with these fears, but at the same time if travel fulfills your happiness that’s what matters most. 😊
Thanks, Samantha. Got a big road trip starting on Friday. I’m sure I’ll be a bit more clear headed once I get on the road.
Fears agreed but don’t ever give up on travelling..
Bcoz travelling like you is dream for some which remains a dream forevr.. 🙂 ^_^
Oh God, this is exactly what I feel!
Glad it resonated with you. Stop by again. Lots more travel stories to come.
Nick ~ as a fellow excursionist, I too used to have the fear of bringing someone into my life who may or may not share in my love of traveling… the liberating feeling of being able to up and go as we pleased was hard to possibly give up in exchange of having someone fill the void that traveling couldn’t fill. It’s quite a conundrum, having to make such hard decisions. There have been many times, though, that I had wished during my travels that I could share my love of being on the road with that someone special, especially if it was a road trip to visit friends or family. But as a someone introvert, I learned to appreciate my travelers as a loner. Until I finally met someone who shares my love of traveling ~ my husband. Meeting him didn’t happen until I turned 50, and I took the leap of faith and moved 2,000 miles to be with him. And after 5 years and many miles traveled together, I finally found my soul/travel mate. And my hopes are that you’ll be as lucky as I am.
I took the leap, and the net did appear… and I’m confident that the same will happen to you, someday.
Thanks for sharing this, Tina. Most of the time I’m confident of all the good things, too.
I have so many of the same issues & thoughts. My traveling and wanderlustyness has only gotten worse since my mom died –and it was already there to begin with, in terms of using poetry events as an excuse to travel. I typically travel once a month, whether that’s a weekend in a nearby place, to visit a friend, or to use poems as an excuse. Some months I don’t, only because I’m saving time from my job to go somewhere for longer periods.Even during those longer periods, I try to cram in something extra. So last year, when I went to Nationals, I went to Albuquerque first to stay at Don’s (my second home) and then ride with the team up the Pacific Coast Highway.
I’m very restless. I get itchy when I don’t get out into the mountains or toward some water or toward a friend or on the road.
Then I hit some facts about how I’m 45 and have always rented and lived with other people, which is a trade off.
When my mother died and in subsequent visits to my parent’s house, I started having anxiety attacks around not shaping my life correctly somehow–being this old without a home of my own (or, at that time, a stable relationship, either). I felt,a s people were taking some of my mother’s paintings, that I was doing life incorrectly. My living space now is already cluttered with favorite objects I inherited when my grandmother passed.I also witnessed and lived with my friend Malika after her mother—a horder– passed away and I remember the anxiety of renting dumpsters to sort through all the STUFF.My parents have less, but it’s still a thing. When my Dad passes, how will I sort through it all? Especially not having a house of my own?
I also think of my own aging, my own middle aged health.The potentially really scary insecurity of a fixed income and still being a renter.I think that maybe I should have led a not-as-queer life, had kids….
And this is where the argument and the panic and the anxiety break down and boil down to this:
When did I ever want what other people want from our capitalistically structured society, built around careerist advancement, THINGS, staying rooted and in big debt? I never really wanted children. I figured that they would happen, like the queer homeless teen thrown out by bigoted parents. Or the partner who already had kids from a previous relationship. I get my maternalism out in the poetry community.And, as it happens, living with Theresa means that her kids are part of my life and sometimes stay with us and that has been such an amazing thing.
This is a pretty good example of answering my own questions. When I freak out about this stuff, I settle down on how…answers manifest.What we want/need often tends to arrive.Maybe not when or how. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about age and dying alone without all the artifacts of my parents and grandparents. Because I exist in communities.Because I am a traveler, I know I could live in Columbus OH, camp out with the Tuggles in Chicago, Bill and Sou McMillan have offered numerously for me to live there, with sanctuary on their first floor. I have a plan, a dream of getting my start int he Southwest at the Betsy with Don & Mindy.
I am largely estranged from my blood family. My life looks nothing like any of theirs.That creates distance, awkward smiles, and holiday card relationships that I don’t wish were that way, but they kind of are. I’m grappling with that.I want to be connected for more than just funerals— it’s really challenging.
There is also this sense at work that I should be traveling now as much as possible because at some points in the future, I know I won’t be able to.Whether for health reasons, lack of funds/a job/ trying to focus on what I want to be doing for my life/relationship commitment, I know I will have to slow down. Especially if I plan a big relocation/re-settlement. So I try to keep this job that I have that has benefits & PTO & sick leave to sustain the travel (as much as the writing). I know I don’t want to be here forever, so there’s a limbo in that & I know the trade off will probably be travel.
Often, I think of Mark Strand’s “I move to keep things whole”
that’s very much in my soul and in my nature.
I don’t move from house to house as much anymore–that’s pretty settled–but engaging with the friend-family I’ve made & changing scenery is very important to me, too.
Maybe we are afraid of commitment because –look at all our losses! They are intense and real and we are sensitive.Or maybe that has nothing to do with our wandery spirits at all.Maybe we just like to throw ourselves into the world because we’re embracing life, otherness,different experiences. Maybe that’s what we collect instead of house/kids/things.It’s in us to do that, to prioritize that kind of living than a settling kind.
I also tend to think that there is this cultural pressure, which is very real and also very intense, that tends to infantalize the traveler as selfish and immature, unrooted, shifty(I think especially in terms of the masculine–the tropes of having to provide for a family and be the man, be the breadwinner, blah blah blah, which is so at odds with rugged individualism.I guess men are supposed to be rugged individualists who fly fish and kill things on weekends to balance the other part. But if you just travel without family, you’re always a boy? This is maybe an area of how sexism effects men). It’s more and more difficult inthis country for people like us or who are even more nomadic to exist outside of what other people want. It is harder to make your way in the world if you don’t follow conventions or give in to the fear of losing a job and benefits. It’s more difficult because–realistically–it’s also hella expensive and scary if you look at how punitively our culture is about healthcare and not playing the games on the fear wheel correctly.
So anyway….all this to say, so much of what you’ve written here also resonates with me.I advocate your adventures.You cast the net even farther than I do and I love reading about your extensions. [ð]
You have love where you walk.You have family everywhere, too.All of these concerns are real and intense.I see and feel them too, my friend.
Sending you so much love. I hope to see you out there.
All the best songs,
KG
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great man