As far as I know, I was born with wanderlust. There were certainly many events, messages, role models and more which nurtured the urge to travel as I grew up. But as far back as I can recall, I fantasized about wandering away down the road with no plan or destination in mind; just a random rocket accelerating past the bounds of the small segment of suburban America where I was raised.
Specifically, I fantasized about wandering west. I didn’t think about it as “west” when I was a child. West just happened to be the direction that my young mind hadn’t mapped out. To the south of my home was the church we went to every Sunday. A church is a nice, big building for kids to explore. But after exploring the building as much as possible, there was no mystery left to tantalize me.
To the north was the elementary school. The route to school was even more well-worn than the route to church. And to the East was the region that to me first was dominated by Wendy’s fast food, and later, as I gained independence, Woodfield Mall. Maybe the reason these places, church, school, the mall, could not represent the seductive draw of the unknown for me was because they were so structured, so definite in purpose, so differentiated in their potential.
The West, on the other hand, in my mind was dominated by the library. My mom encouraged me and my two sisters to read from an early age, so trips to the library were frequent. She also encouraged us to learn about the Christian faith, and that’s a tremendous understatement. To put a finer point on it, I remember a conversation about priorities we had when I was about 12 or so. Both my parents made it clear that my priorities should be God, family, school, and then friends, in that very specific, very rigid order. At the time, I certainly thought that friends should be raised at least one rank higher, but the first two were so elevated in our family that perhaps the only thing I learned about them that day was that they weren’t co-equal.
One thing many non-Christians, and many Christians, for that matter, may not realize about the Christian faith is that it has the potential to instill a fascination with mystery, and with foreign cultures, believe it or not, especially if you actually read the Bible.. When you raise a child to believe that the most important story in the history of stories comes from a faraway, ancient culture which revolves around myths, legends and prophecies, it may follow that there’s a higher probability the child in question will develop a predilection for fantasy and exotica, rather than things like mathematics and physics. Sometimes, not always.
At any rate, that was the case with me. And if you could see my reading list when I was young, or my reading list now, for that matter, you’d find it full of stories about people who were swept away from home, willingly or not, or stories already set in otherworldly environs, populated by unheard of creatures, enveloped by ethereal forces, and quite possibly with a strong, character based, ethical subtext.
Perhaps that set apart the library from the other institutions of my childhood—the library was a place with a definite purpose, but that purpose was the most expansive, limitless pathway to other worlds that I could access in those dark days before the internet was born. I loved any book about space, or prehistory, or about adventures set in faraway lands. I remember finding a young adult books about the gods of the east. It blew my mind to know that there even existed more than a few gods for the world to choose between, let alone thousands, and that they would appear in such terrifying, monstrous forms. One of my favorite book series was a Christian adventure series called The Cooper Kids. It was essentially a Christian version of The Hardy Boys. I used to read these in church instead of listening to the sermon, which thankfully was good enough for mom. The father of the Cooper family would take his two boys along as he traveled to exotic locations. In particular, I remember one book was set in a jungle village where a witch-doctor utilized his knowledge of poisonous fauna to control the villagers through fear. Another was set in the desert where a series of clues led to the actual gates of Hell described in Revelations. Later on, I worshipped Star Wars and Indiana Jones as the ultimate tales of exotic adventure. Indiana probably played a big role in directing me to my eventual career as a history teacher. If only my poor mother had realized how deeply all this exotic literature and adventure movies would influence me, perhaps she would have encouraged my early interests in computers and robotics to offset the wanderlust that would eventually drag her only son to the literal other side of the planet. Mothers, take heed.
There’s another reason why the West may have been the spiritual terra incognita in my young mind. To the west, past the library, was our town train station. I seldom went that direction, almost never beyond the train tracks. If I had really wanted to fulfill my dreams of playing Huck Finn in my land locked suburb to the North West of Chicago, at any time I could have spent a few bucks and hopped on the train. I wouldn’t have gotten very far, but it was always there, and remains there to this day.
As it turned out, I stayed in my little suburb until I was twenty years old. I satisfied my wanderlust with climbing through the handful of bushes and trees at the park across the street, through the empty rooms of abandoned supermarkets and apartments my friends and I sought out as teens, and with long, aimless night time walks when I my friends had moved to the city. Eventually, I moved to the city too. I thought this would scratch my wanderlust in a different way, a way that was more influenced by my collegiate obsession with Tom Waits than my earlier fascinations. In the end, I found Chicago to be just about as restrictive and limiting as my childhood home, all things considered. There was a lot more I could do, but a lot more I couldn’t do.
I started to dream of studying abroad while I was attending university in the city. I set my mind on Mexico, in part because that’s where my father’s family came from, and also because that was the nearest place to see some real, ancient ruins. I started the process of researching destinations and applying to Mexican schools, but I had absolutely no money to fund the travel. “Don’t worry about the money. You’ll find the money,” the people at the study abroad office told me. They must have meant, “You’ll take out even more loans to find the money,” because no one offered me any scholarships.
I did get one thing out of the time I spent considering studying abroad. While surveying a selection of pamphlets about possible destinations, I saw one with a picture of a young man much like myself sitting on a step next to a bald, mahogany-skinned man wearing the orange robes of a Thai monk. I thought, “Wow, that’s someone who really went for it. Wish I could do that.”
About three years later, I flew to Bangkok. The final straw came when my roommate told me he was considering teaching English in South Korea. I was at a really unhappy phase in my life at that time. My parents had divorced several years before. On top of that, I had had a falling out with one of my best friends over a girl. And even worse, my student teaching experience was so difficult I was considering that I had chosen the wrong career altogether. When Nick announced, “Who know, I might be in South Korea next year!” I couldn’t take it anymore. I started researching teaching in South Korea immediately. In the process, I found an article titled Top Ten Destinations for Teaching English. South Korea was number one, and right behind it, Thailand. “If you’re okay with making way less money in exchange for way more fun, you need to consider Thailand.” Sounded good to me. I was never the kind to plan for a big bank account over big experiences, as my present bank account will attest.
Several of my friends have told me how brave they think I must have been to go through with my travel plans. I always reply that if I was brave, it was only because I was naïve. I thought a white-ish, college educated young man had a better shot at making it half-way around the world than virtually anyone else. And I certainly wasn’t eager to jump back into the Illinois public school system. I set about taking the steps I needed to take to work in Thailand—applying for jobs, buying a passport, saying my goodbyes.
It’s a miracle it worked out in the end.
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