It was incredibly hot inside the car cabin when I lost my shit. Two days, sixteen plus hours on the road. Within fifteen miles of home, and Staten Island traffic snarled up and bit me, reducing every thought to a fit of anger.
The only sentence that could possibly make its way through the clouds : “somebody get me out of here”
Call it a moral imperative. Ask anyone on a dating site and they will tell you they “love to travel” No shit.
The predisposition to wander isn’t new or unique to anyone. Now we have to decide how tightly we are to be tethered to the world we left behind.
Our mobile devices alluring in their appearance and functionality (fun little aside: “mobile” is a misnomer since most usage takes place in the home). Slick to handle, near impossible to put down.
Even on the road, we are accessible. Conversations are neither dropped nor forgotten. Our availability is more a personal than technical decision. Decry it if you will, but if someone is incessantly texting on a camping trip, maybe they don’t get invited back. Just saying.
There are degrees to how people get away now. A lot of times I want to leave a place, but do I ever want to leave my friends? Never. Family, rarely – and only because they are that much closer than said friends. I don’t want to lose the thread of our lives, and now satiating the urge to get away and see different shit means a lesser degree of disconnection. As long as I remember the charger.
A lot of people hate this aspect of modern life but I love it. Probably my need for constant engagement, attention and sense of freedom. All hail the iPhone and the resulting device revolution.
