The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost is a travel memoir written by Rachel Friedman, a girl who went through some momentous changes in her life. From a young age, she had been dead set on becoming a musician; however, she ended up dropping out of music school and trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. One reason she dropped out was because the pressure of becoming the best was affecting her performance, and she found herself actually getting worse. The rote practice day by day took away the intrinsic motivation and pleasure of playing her instrument, and practicing became demotivating. |
"I've developed a complex about being branded a quitter. I have incorrectly concluded that quitting is not a choice of one thing over the other, but rather a comment on one's character, no matter how trivial the commitment or how great the opportunity on the other side of quitting is. I'm also a die-hard people-pleaser, and the idea of disappointing a restaurant manager I've spent a grand total of 5 minutes with sends shivers through me." (pg. 88-89)
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate...We travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more...All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.
Travel is like love, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by unfamiliarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.
While these quotes (and many more like them) address the change that happens when you travel, most quotes don't talk about what happens after you return.
“She’s addicted to the rush of being a foreigner: new cities, new people, new food, new languages,,,the geographies of our childhoods don’t quite suit either of us, something we have in common. But she’s more displaced than usual after her travels. Everything here is the same, or so it seems to her, while she is definitely different after every journey. Her friends can’t relate to her experiences abroad because they haven’t traveled yet, so she’s greeted by sharp loneliness back in Sydney...I am in that same place, where my ideas and experiences and desires are expanding. I’m in that traveler’s space with her.” (pg. 106)
And, sometimes travelers are in search of something that was the reason why they left in the first place; returning can cause restlessness and confusion if they have not found what they are looking for. See the next quote below:
“And so you see our twin problems. I could not get a fix on my one thing because I was always stressing about what I was truly meant to do and be, especially after giving up music. Carly could not stay put because she was constantly chasing happiness, searching for it in every foreign nook and cranny. My purpose and her satisfaction were equally illusive things, both of us so desperately trying to figure out our places in the worlds. And we were both restless, no doubt wanderers at heart—travelers.” (pg. 108)
I suppose the point is that people tout travel as so beautiful, amazing, wonderful, and all the inspirational quotes out there fill people up with excitement. But those words don't fully capture the implications of travel. Buzzwords like change and learning and finding yourself are great, but what does that actually mean? It means that you will become a different person, yes, but also that you may not fit back into the old life that you left when you got on that plane. Is that a bad thing? No, of course not. But that feeling of loneliness and isolation is a real thing, and I think those are emotions that should also be tied to travel along with the normal emotions of happiness, wonder, thankfulness, and so on.
Overall, I would give this memoir a 6/10. It had its moments, but I found myself happy that I had finished the book. If you get a chance to read it, let's compare notes!
~burn bright~
Jess