Travels in the Riel World

On Americans’ interest in the world…

The majority of the American people in the run-up to this election said they believe that the next president, one of his most important priorities should be restoring America’s position in the world. That to me says it all: That means that there is an openness, that there is a desire, a hunger to know about the world, and to know about where America is and fits into the world.

                                                          - Christiane Amanpour, quoted in a recent news story

What do you think? Are Americans more interested and engaged in the world?

On living in a multipolar world. I think Eugene Robinson nailed it in a recent op-ed column:

The lesson that’s being brought home this summer is that we live in a multipolar world. We knew that, but in our political rhetoric we prefer to ignore it. Now, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are going to be able to make it through their convention without acknowledging the world’s complications and interconnections.

Obama will probably talk more about engagement and the “international community,” while McCain is likely to sound more confrontational. I’m pretty sure, though, that neither will come clean about a central truth: Our future is being decided not just in Washington but in Beijing and Moscow — and in Riyadh, Islamabad, New Delhi, Dubai, Caracas, Abuja, Brasilia. . . .

We still have the wherewithal to lead. But we’re deluding ourselves if we believe we won’t have to adapt to the new reality.

On the wonders of travel…

“I recall my younger self as a dazed longhair gazing slack-jawed day after day at monuments, ruins, beguiling countrysides, and strange new cultures. From the bazaars of Marrakesh to the mosques of Istanbul and into the Hindu Kush, I could feel history and geography transforming me, and I fell stupidly in love with travel.

“I met other globe-roamers, and with them shared meals, beaches, and bus seats, and climbed peaks to celebrate sunsets. At night we huddled in cafes or around campfires, swapping tales and swearing that travel was the best thing that had ever happened to us, the best thing that could happen to anyone.”

                                                                                   - Brad Newsham, Take Me With You

Thoughts on time…

“Eskimos working for a fish cannery in Alaska thought factory whistles were ridiculous. The idea that men would work or not work because of a whistle seemed to them sheer lunacy. For the Eskimo, tides determined what men did, how long they did it, and when they did it…

The Europeans who invaded the North American continent imposed their time system on everything. We have concrete notions concerning books, houses, dams, office buildings, etc., all of which have scheduled times for completion, just as children are supposed to walk and talk and go to school at certain ages. For the Hopi, every living thing has its own inherent time…

Time started as a natural series of rhythms associated with daily, monthly and annual cycles. It is now imposed as an outside constraint that sends its tentacles into every nook and crevice.”

                                                                                                - Edward Hall, Beyond Culture

On travel… 

“A curious human linkage is forged amongst travelers, making it possible to understand one another almost immediately because we recognize something of ourselves in each other. We’re the sort that doesn’t need a home. The desire to see the world is what matters. Traveling is like being in love; it has that kind of strength. The love some people give to another person, to a home, to a career, we give to the road, to the mountains and villages, to children running in the streets, to the women at the well, to the trees, the moon.

We throw ourselves into the world and become creatures of chance, of the stars. Traveling alone can be hell, in its utter solitude and in its panic, panic not from rain or cold or sickness but from the sense of displacement, and the question ‘Why am I here?’ But something compels us and it’s this: when we travel we absorb fresh life around every corner. For years the urge to travel might refuse to identify itself, as if it’s a dormant seed inside us. But one day we find it somewhere else, furrowed in the body of another person we may meet on a train or at a bus stop, and suddenly this yearning is happily, instantly recognizable. We understand each other’s need to travel. We understand this without question.”

                                                           - Lauri Gough, Kite Strings of the Southern Cross

Here is another type of post that you will begin to see regularly on this site - Thoughts to ponder. A series of ideas and quotations to think about and discuss:

“Work begins when you  don’t like what you’re doing. There’s a wise saying: make your hobby your source of income. Then there’s no such thing as work, and no such thing as getting tired. That’s been my own experience. I did just what I wanted to do. It takes a little courage at first…But you can make it happen. I think it’s very important for a young person to do what seems to him significant in his life.”

                                                                                     - Joseph Campbell, An Open Life