How to Travel

by The School of Life, Alain de Botton (Editor)

Overview

Going traveling is one of the few things we undertake in a direct attempt to make ourselves happy—and frequently, in fascinating ways, we fail. We get bored, cross, anxious, or lonely. It isn’t surprising: our societies act as if going traveling were simple, just a case of handing over the right sum of money. But a satisfying journey isn’t something we can simply buy, and sadly something that should fill us with excitement can often end up being a source of angst and stress. This is the guide: not to any one destination but to travel in general. It talks to us, among other things, about how we should choose a place to go, what we might do when we get there, how we should make good moments stick in our minds and why hotel rooms can be such liberating places… In a succession of genial essays, we become students of an unexpected but vital topic: how to understand and more fully relax and enjoy (what should be) some of the finest experiences of our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912891177
Publisher:	The School of Life
Publication date:	07/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	132
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. It is a resource for helping us understand ourselves, for improving our relationships, our careers, and our social lives—as well as for helping us find calm and get more out of our leisure hours. They do this through films, workshops, books, and gifts—and through a warm and supportive community. You can find The School of Life online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the globe.

The School of Life Press was established in 2016 to bring together over a decade of research and insights from The School of Life’s content team. Led by founder and series editor Alain de Botton, this is a library to educate, entertain, console, and transform us.

Read an Excerpt

Travelling for Perspective

There’s a long tradition of going travelling in search of things we lack. In the eighteenth century, well-off young English men would take trips to Paris and Rome to acquire more elegant manners and study Classical history; today we might travel to find sunshine or nature. But there are many things we struggle with beyond our inability to understand Roman culture or endure a long, wet winter – and travel can help us with them. A central issue is that we are constantly at risk of feeling disenchanted with our circumstances. At a personal level, we are continually exposed to the enviable lives of others; our imaginations are haunted by our comparative lack of success. At a more general level, our societies often appear fundamentally unimpressive: our institutions look compromised, our media seems coarse and sensationalist, our cities feel chaotic. There is, apparently, little to be grateful for. In theory – of course – we know that can’t be entirely true. We know, in the abstract, that we’re lucky to have enough to eat and a roof over our heads. But such reminders feel emotionally unreal and usually have little impact on their own. For the truth to hit home, we may have to immerse ourselves in true poverty and a genuinely dysfunctional society. We may need to travel to the large parts of the world where people live, on average, on $500 a year or less. We may need to visit a place where it’s normal for the police to extort money from you; where a newspaper editor is likely to be arrested for criticising authority; where government is self-evidently tied to violence and corruption; where the opposition is an armed faction; where a fair trial is a rarity; where luxury would be clean sheets or a tube of toothpaste; where there might be excrement in your food or a dead rat under your bed. A city or country where people maddened by toothache pull out their own teeth; where horrendous infections are commonplace; where large numbers of children receive almost no formal education; where, if there is a school, it is quite probable that those in charge are syphoning off the funds; where sewers run openly through the streets; where people spend their days picking over the refuse in huge dumps. We may well end up deeply moved. As importantly, we are invited to change our perceptions of our own lives, to renew our appreciation of so much that we’d taken for granted: a toilet that flushes, a washing machine, space to ourselves, a pleasant lunch. And we may derive a new sense of how profound and powerful the achievements of our own societies – for all their failings – really are. Paradoxical thought it sounds, travels to places where the true hardships of existence are grimly evident can provide a needed education in gratitude. Our encounter with the reality of the lives of so many others pushes us towards a more accurate perspective on our own condition. Like many great artworks in elegant galleries, they teach us to see – and admire – aspects of the world we usually inhabit that we had scarcely noticed before. And they do this with rather more conviction and lasting impact than any canvas on a wall.

Table of Contents

How to Choose a Destination

What Is ‘Exotic’?

The Suspicion of Happiness

Anxiety

Small Pleasures

Water Towers

The Importance of the Sun

Travel as a Cure for Shyness

The Pleasure of the Airport

The Pleasure of the Flight

Pretty Cities

The Pleasure of Otherness

The Longing to Talk to Strangers

The Vulnerability of Perfection to Emotional Troubles

The Importance of Family Holidays

The Pleasure of the Romantic Minibreak

The Little Restaurant

In Defence of Crowds

The Pleasure of Room Service

The Pleasures of Nature

Drawing Rather than Taking Photographs

Holiday Fling

Traveling for Perspective

Travel and Pilgrimages

How to Spend a Few Days in Paris

How to Come Home

The Advantages of Staying at Home

Cherishing Memories

The Shortest Trip: Going for a Walk

The Shortest Travel Quiz

Editorial Reviews

***What readers are saying:***

 

"I love this book on the philosophy of traveling alone. I was absolutely riveted by the essays. I highly recommend this book." – NetGalley review

"How to Travel helped me narrow down where I want to travel to, why I want to travel there, and who I want to travel with. The blank pages included gave me room to respond to the questions posed in the essays, which made the reading experience that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who dreams of experiencing a culture or world outside of their own but can't decide on a place." – Feefo review

"A lovely collection of thought provoking short essays with note pages for jotting down things like 'useful foreign phrases' or to 'give drawing a go'. So enjoyable, and a perfect gift for someone preparing to travel." – Amazon review

"A book for travelers not tourists, little stories of places, people, experiences and peace to feed the soul. Travelling is a journey and every part of the journey needs to be enjoyed, even the airport. Can imagine the author writing beautiful journals to extract just a few of these musings to put into this book. Absolutely loved it and have read it twice." – NetGalley review

"How to Travel is the perfect size to slip into your backpack for your next trip. It'll look fantastic next to your passport, and boarding pass. This book is also a great gift for those in your life, whether they travel or not, since there's a lot of information about what staying at home can look like, and how that in itself is a form of travel." – Avocado Diaries

From the Publisher