It's Time to Stop Pretending Everyone Can Travel

Let’s keep it all the way real: there are circumstances, many of a systemic socio-economic or political nature, that keep some people at home while others hopscotch the globe. Travel is not cheap or easy for everyone, though a lot of mainstream travel media, particularly travel blogs, will tell you that all you need to do to be able to travel is change your “mindset”.

However, I find these sorts of posts ridiculously obtuse, off-base, and dripping with privilege. The truth is, those of us who travel extensively are blessed by life circumstances, not just a can-do attitude or “positive mindset”. So when some of us proclaim how easy it is to traverse the world (and then go on to admonish those who don’t do the same because they “aren’t trying hard enough”), we neglect to realize that our wandering is more due to luck than hard work and desire.

For even if you weren’t born in the proverbial spoon in your mouth, you might be lucky enough to hold a passport from a powerful “first-world” country that allows you to travel foot loose and visa free to the vast majority of the world’s treasures (my Canadian passport gives me visa free entry into 174 countries; were I to get my Jamaican one that number would decrease to 77). Or you might be lucky enough to be living in a country whose stable economy and lofty currency allows you the external purchasing power necessary to globetrot without making a huge dent in your savings.

Travel privilege might also come in the form of the two parent, double-income household that helped you to get through university (heck, going to uni is a privilege in and of itself!) without taking on a hefty student loan. I mean, how easy is it to quit your job to travel the world when the Bank of Mom and Dad foot the lion’s share of your tuition bill years prior? And even if you got through school without the assistance of your parents, think of how lucky you are to not have had to assist them (or your siblings) financially — this is a sad reality for many. The savings from your part-time campus job would have dwindled pretty quickly had you had to help them make their rent or pay for repairs on their car, don’t you think?

While we’re on the topic, let’s talk about the ability to save money in the first place. Even with a decently paying gig, an increase in one’s cost of living may make snapping up that $400 USD glitch fare to Milan on a whim wholly impossible.

Health is another aspect of the equation that is often ignored. It goes without saying that able-bodied people who are free of illness have the world at their feet. But what if you have reduced mobility or are afflicted by disease? Hopping on a plane to visit parts unknown is no longer so easy, is it?

I don’t want to belabour the point too excessively, but I do want to illustrate a few of the many factors that keep people from seeing the world. After all, it’s not as easy as foregoing your favourite cuppa at Starbucks or clamping your eyes shut as you repeat the mantra “Yes, I can travel too”. This “common sense” advice simply does not work when you don’t have the money or physical mobility to get the heck out of dodge; it’s even more useless when you can’t get the time off work or are unable to find a sitter for your children.

So I repeat: not everyone can travel. Despite assertions to the contrary, it’s not something everybody can achieve, even if they work really hard to make it happen; even with a will the size of Russia, there is no way. Let’s stop pretending it’s so easy and instead acknowledge how lucky some of us are to fill our passports with stamps, relatively unencumbered by the burdens of life and circumstance.

This article was originally published on Oneika the Traveller and is reposted here with permission.