Nature or Nurture?

Have you ever had that feeling that the universe is conspiring to bring something to your attention? The same theme keeps coming up, again and again, in places and ways that have no real relation to each other, but if you fill in the gaps between those instances, the metaphorical light bulb can go off.

For me lately this uncanny theme has been how people connect with one another. As E. M. Forster famously wrote in Howard’s End, “Only connect.” And let me tell you, Forster knew a thing or two about connection. The aspect of connection that has occupied my thoughts most recently is the ways people learn from one another and emulate, either consciously or unconsciously, the people whom they admire or are close to (be this good or bad).

I read another blogger’s post recently on what inspires him to travel (find it here), which of course led me to think on my own travel inspiration. I’ve always loved to move. For as long as I can remember, I have been incapable of sitting still and I have always loved long car trips to new places (airplanes not so much, but I’m learning to deal with that). For a long time I thought that it was a case of wanderlust born of living in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

But this particular self-reflective moment happened to coincide with my trying to figure out what I wanted to say at my grandfather’s memorial service this past weekend. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my love of travel goes much deeper than my small-town roots – it was something that I learned from my grandfather.

He also came from a small-town – he grew up on a farm during the Great Depression and the Second World War, and then worked as a logger and a mechanic to support his family. Once he retired, he and my grandmother literally set about seeing the world. I lived near an airport, so they would come to stay with us for a few days before setting of on one of their many trips, to Hawaii (he would sit and talk with the veterans on the Arizona for hours), Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and all over the Bavarian Alps.

I grew up associating my grandfather with travel, and as I grew older and started travelling on my own, that’s how he and I connected. The first time that I went to Europe he mailed me their photo albums from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland so that I could look at what he and my grandmother had seen and enjoyed there as I retraced their steps. When I spent a year “studying” abroad and travelling all over Europe, he read this blog more than anyone and I sent him postcards from every city that I visited.

It wasn’t until I started thinking about his memorial service that I realized how much of my grandfather’s love for travel I’ve absorbed, because it happened without my noticing it. I’ve been lucky because my parents have always been keen on travel and we’ve taken some wonderful holidays. I mean, I got back from a year of travelling only to be able to spend two weeks in Colorado with my family last year. But it was only in talking to my dad this weekend that I saw that his own interest in travel came from my grandfather, and in turn passed to me. Travel is a family value, essentially, and now it’s become a legacy.       

Is it possible to “catch” wanderlust? I’m sure that it is. That’s what I thought happened to me, but now I realize that it’s actually been an integral part of my life ever since my parents stuck me in a car seat to drive the eighteen or so hours to South Carolina when I was two years old. But I like to believe that people can grow into anything, such as football fans (shamelessly advertising my last post) or world travellers. I’d love to hear other opinions and stories about where your love for travel, or any other passions that you have, comes from if you care to join me in my musings.