After a long weekend of diving, we are driving home. The night has fallen, the road is being created from the darkness by the car lamps, on and on. On the distance, the lights of Rotterdam, the never stopping comings and goings of the harbor, the reflexions of the city lights in the clouds above. In between them and us, darkness, terra incógnita. Now and then, a board, telling us where to go, when to turn, when to stay. The road curves and stretches, and we follow it, and we follow it. We are traveling home.
But are we now?
I have the idea that once upon a time to travel was to go to that Rotterdam of us. Across tierra incógnita, that is. It wasn’t so much about how far away the destination would be, but more about the uncertainty of the road. I think about it and I believe that this is what makes traveler a desired destiny. How many of us haven’t answer “I would like to travel” to the question of what to do if money wouldn’t be a limitation?
But is it travel that thing that we do nowadays, with our planes that bring us from a perfectly defined place to another also perfectly defined place, in a perfectly defined time? Or our google maps, that shows us exactly where are we at exactly every other moment? Are we really traveling if we can’t get lost?
Turn the question around. Think in all these people jailed, all this people that lacks freedom. Do they now? When they say that they can’t travel, what do they mean, actually? Can’t they not just start walking? How many of us are really prevented from start walking? In any direction, with any size and amount of steps you want. How many of us are going to be really stopped when starting walking?
Perhaps that is why we invented the roads and the boards and the googles. In order not to travel no more, in order to be brought somewhere, in order to loose our freedom, or at least curtail it. It seems to me that not many of us actually wanted to be free. So we have build and bought stable houses with thick walls, and controlled roads and informative boards, and reliable planes and timetables.
The funny thing? Every one of us is, still, free.