Walkabout

Back in the world of Accidental Enlightenment, our wandering Gulliver Banick has just befriended a thirty-something Australian on a "walkabout."  What exactly is that, might you ask?  Well, Banick describes it as follows:

The custom of walkabout, an Aussie adaptation of an unpronounceable Aboriginal word, was hardwired into every youngster's brain during his or her teenage years.  It basically involved traipsing about in a gypsy, nomadic fashion for up to several years, and taking in the larger world.  Schools could wait, and employers could go hang themselves.  But of course, those institutions understood--they were once young Australians (and New Zealanders) too.  For an Aborigine, the journey may have consisted of hundreds of miles out into the barren, orange Outback.  For modern-day white kids, it meant Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa, Antarctica, lots of islands, and the stars and planets, if they could get there.

Wow, a country that values experiencing other cultures and absorbing other world views, rather than instilling a sensibility of indomitable cultural superiority (which, let's be honest, these days isn't even so much the case)?  How fabulous!

Think about it.  The Australians have walkabout.  Europe has the gap year.  And what do we Americans have?--oh that's right, a semester abroad.  Maybe we really just love the idea of multitasking, but I think this whole study abroad thing evolved so as to give young Americans a small opportunity to stretch their wings while keeping them right on track to grow up on time (roughly, May of their 22nd year).  

Hmm, I must be digressing or something because it is starting to sound like I have beef with Americans studying abroad, which is absolutely not the case.  In fact, I don't necessarily have beef with anything, more of just a saddening confusion.  Why is it that in America traveling has shifted into this column of "something to do in my leisure time with my extra capital" instead of into the arena of "world travel is an integral part of my life?"  

Whenever I tell someone about my plans to travel extensively over the next year or so--I suppose in the Laura version of a walkabout--the reaction consists of some variation of "wow, that's really great, good for you," but the tone remains the same: one of surprise and awe.  As though my travel plans, in place of finding a "proper" job, are a rarity.  I don't know, perhaps they are.  But I wish they weren't. 

This is not to say that Americans don't travel, and I am not trying to shed a superior light upon myself in an attempt to appear more cultured.  I simply feel that on the whole, our culture does not place significant value on experiencing new things.  And that is a tragedy.