Traveling in the Moment

It’s hard to admit you might never be back — standing on the shore of southern India at sunrise, staring down into the faces of the Terra Cotta Warriors, even sitting in the lobby of a local beach club. Whether it’s due to distance, financial/unforeseen circumstances, health or simply a lack of time, there’s no telling when we go someplace new whether we’ll ever make it back. That’s why traveling in the moment (much like living in the moment) is so important — especially with screens and lenses constantly competing for our attention.

From a family’s trip to the World Trade Center weeks before the 9/11 attacks to the beaches of my very own New Jersey, standing with a wedding party days before Hurricane Sandy destroyed the venue, sightseeing and celebrating would mean so much less if I didn’t take the time to appreciate my surroundings. These are both extreme cases where the destination will never be the same whether I am there or not, but for many places we visit in a lifetime, who can promise we’ll get to experience them all over again? Do you want to collect memories or likes on your Facebook account?

Traveling through Vancouver on my first real solo trip this past July, it could have been all too easy to tap my smartphone mindlessly over a meal or while sitting alone in a park, but I didn’t. Call it a test, call it a conscious effort, but from the first breakfast at the cafe counter downstairs from where I was staying, I tucked my phone away and did anything else — read a paper, looked around, focused on how my food tasted — without taking a photo and posting it to Instagram. This might sound ridiculous to those who haven’t been initiated into the demanding universe of social media, but to me it was a whole new world. Having a picturesque cocktail and multicourse feast in an underground Lebanese joint reminiscent of Casablanca — and not posting a thing about it — was like sharing a delicious secret with myself.

I constantly struggle with a strong yearning to document my travels, but capturing the moment to look at it later isn’t always the best option. There’s so many times I look back and wish I had simply been present in that instant without any other distraction — a community center performance in South Africa, any cathedral in Europe. Pictures and videos can be a poignant way to share an experience, capture a memory to look back on, create something artistic, but there’s a time to put the camera down. In an oversaturated, media-sharing-obsessed society, that time is increasingly difficult to gauge, but the instinct should continue to live in the guts of travelers who do so for the pure reason of savoring the experience; listen to that instinct.

Which place do you wish you could go back to and be more “present”?

— written by Brittany Chrusciel