¿Por Queue No?

by Yitz Miller

Many of you know that my fiancée and I are spending most of our time traveling between now and next May. In fact, this newsletter post comes to you from the midst of a 300kph, barely 3-hour TGV journey directly from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Bordeaux as we commence our “really REALLY Western Europe” journey from South-Western France to Lisbon via the Atlantic Coast. (Irish and Icelandic brothers—no disrespect intended…I know you’re even farther west, but the train didn’t go there for this trip).

One part of my joyfully-now-archived internet dating profile noted “62 countries and 48 states,” with the sarcastic addendum that… “Once I make it to Alaska (looks like next year), I think I’ll find it far more fun to say 49-states-out-of-50 then to actually go to North Dakota.” (apologies to anyone who was offended by a disparaging comment about North Dakota. I’m sure it’s a very nice place).

One might reasonably ask “Yitz, what is it about travel you find so captivating?” Well, I’m glad you asked! 😉

For this particular year, with Mónica, it’s a really cool way to simultaneously challenge, develop, and anchor our relationship begore next year’s wedding. But that’s not the ultimate answer.

Traveling 6-weeks-out-of-eight as we’re doing now is not a long term lifestyle to which either of us aspire, but I’ll freely admit to having lived most of my life perceiving cultural and historical travel as a compelling opportunity to be seized whenever possible.

One thing travel is NOT about for me is “checking boxes” (as fun as it is to count—now 66, btw 😉). When I traveled regularly with my kiddo as he was growing up, and as I now strongly encourage study abroad, it was for the same perspective-expanding reasons that led Mark Twain to comment “Travel is the antidote to prejudice.” (At the moment the kiddo’s in Copenhagen expressly hoping to comprehend why Denmark consistently ranks as the world’s most content/happy country).

But as my Renaissance-explorer-yearnings grow rather than subside despite vastly increased intolerance to jet-lag, my over-analytical self-reflective brain ponders the question “What’s my continued motivation?”

A few weeks back, Mónica and I took “A 100 millennia-an-hour archaeological tour of the British museum,” during which the professor leading the tour theorized: “Homo sapiens differentiate themselves from prior humanoid species in one particularly-critical way: they have an inherent bias against the status quo, and it’s that seemingly-irrepressible urge to leave a perfectly good valley where there are fish and berries to eat in order to find out what’s over the next mountain ridge which ultimately led to exponential increases in human interaction and development of the species.” In other words, we are self-reflectively, insatiably curious.

The Center for Conscious Leadership offers a nice perspective on the dichotomy “Curiosity vs Being Right,” and (accurately) labels the latter as a fear-generated defense mechanism / survival instinct. https://youtu.be/QDr7NkoJ4Cc?si=5Tc1ar-eVa4tmYEF).

One thing that is inherently true about any survival mechanism is that its goal is to maintain the status quo (alive) at the expense of any risk-inherent development…in other words, stagnation explicitly in opposition to growth.

Mónica and my shared motto is: “¿por qué no?“ It’s a powerful motto not only because “Why not?” represents the default position of “yes,“ but also because it allows for the option to conclude “there’s a good reason to say no in this case.”

I don’t know if my “why not?” mentality is ingrained, or a product of growing up in Silicon Valley. Very rapidly after moving to highly-provincial Boston, I realized: “oh… Hollywood and Silicon Valley are the same Gold Rush Californians who said “¿por qué no?“ (though probably in English…or German…or Yiddish) as they hitched up the covered wagon, and New England is the people who looked out their front door and said “You’re doing what? You’re going where?” as they waved politely, rolled their eyes, and probably threatened their children with dire consequences “if they ever did something that stupid / irresponsible / crazy / (entrepreneurial?) / (non-Puritan?)”

For me, all of the above pieces form the motivation that keeps me traveling long after the goal of encountering new perspectives and combatting prejudice has been substantially met—the same insatiable desire to move and grow rather than stagnate—the same human curiosity that inherently wonders what’s over the next mountain ridge.

This particular week, i’m pretty sure the mountain ridge is the Pyrenees and on the other side is Spain, but…we’ll see! (We’ll just Basque in the joy of the journey 🙄)