A guest post by Vanessa Deering
17 buses, 12 planes, 7 boats, 5 trains. 11 countries.
Over the past four months, my travel in Europe has provided me with space for pause after years in the international humanitarian aid industry. Though not without its magic, it has not been a fantasy-infused journey either. The realities of the world are inescapable, particularly during these volatile and trying times.
We are wounded. Wounded by what we see, what we read, what we hear, what we feel we have no control over, what we don’t understand, what we fear.
And yet, every day I am on the road, I see beauty in the world.
I see it in the grandmotherly Turkish woman who insists I sit next to her on a five-hour bus ride from Sulguk to Bodrum so she can look after me amidst a sea of men. I am the only other woman on an otherwise full bus.
I see it in the two Syrian sisters with whom I briefly interact on the Greek island of Kos, sisters who are trying to make it to Germany – one a mathematics teacher, the other a student whose studies were interrupted because her country is a living hell. I hug them, and the younger one touches my arm with such tenderness that I almost cry. She is only 17.
I see it in the twenty-year-old backpackers from a multitude of countries; their joy and excitement for first-time travel palpable and contagious. I see it in the fifty-something–year-old backpackers whose indefatigable energy rivals that of their younger counterparts.
I see it in “the locals,” everywhere, in every country, who stop to help with directions, offer a smile, translate, laugh with and at you, offer drinks.
I see it in every person with whom I have conversed late into the night, to the point when exhaustion kicks in but engagement is so enjoyable you push past it.
There is a freedom, at least amongst other travelers, where people reveal themselves, their vulnerabilities, their hopes, their disappointments, their joys, more readily than if they were home, wherever home is. Age is not a factor.
And mostly, it is unfiltered. Mostly, it is honest, because there is nothing to lose. You are in a place for a day, a week. You do not have the luxury of time for a slow reveal; you are who you are in that moment. There is an authenticity that prevails.
Here, too, is where I see beauty. Here, too, is what I wish we did in the U.S.
I will eventually return to humanitarian aid work, because I believe, now more than ever, that it is necessary. It is something that makes sense to me in this chaotic world, even with its imperfect systems that we constantly strive to improve.
And so I choose vulnerability over vitriol. I choose connection over coldness. I choose friendship over fear-mongering. I choose tolerance over temporary insanity.
These choices do not make you soft. They do not make you naïve to the realities of the world and the complexities of the pressing issues we must address. They make you humane.
And you don’t have to be a humanitarian aid worker to assume this role.
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