Thursday, April 3, 2008

Traveling Alone

The older you get, the more boring traveling alone becomes. It's different when you're younger---whether you're alone or not, traveling can be a blast. But as you age, the fun factor declines. Only the first couple of days are enjoyable. After that, the scenery becomes annoying, and people's voices start to grate. There's no escape, for if you close your eyes to block these out, all kinds of unpleasant memories pop up. It gets to be too much trouble to eat in a restaurant, and you find yourself checking you watch over and over as you wait for streetcars that never seem to arrive. Trying to make yourself understood in a foreign language becomes a total pain.

From Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

I, for one, hope that this never happens to me, at any point in my life. But if it does, it begs the question... why wait for retirement to explore this planet we live on?

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