In the recent times, an increasing number of Pakistanis are becoming obsessive about travel. No, I’m not talking about the once a year family vacation that we all used to look forward to. Joining facebook pages like The Travel Diary proves that travel too has become a weird sort of a competition. I saw a new city before you did, my photos are better than yours, I traveled business class (take that bitch)!
One might argue that it is their money and they are spending it on something they enjoy. Fair enough. There used to be a time we would wait for family to gather so we could go through these very precious photographs with them. Now, they are all over the travel pages, even the personal couple photos that you would keep to yourselves.
It seems we have become slaves to validation. Going on a vacation with your beloved husband is no longer enough. Therefore we seek for more. So we put up our photos online for random people on the internet to see. Where is the purpose to our lives lost, I wonder...
There is something else I have wondered for a long time. Is it the depression you feel living in Pakistan that makes you want to escape all the time? I was living in KL, Malaysia for the past three years. Never did I once feel like escaping that place. Is it escapism we are looking for? And who can blame us for it? The news is depressing, the driving is depressing, the way men stare at you when you leave the house is depressing, the water condition is depressing, the bills are depressing. And so we seek comfort - in travel and in food.
Do four days of escapism really bring happiness? I remember, as a young adult, whenever I returned from a vacation back to Karachi I would feel more depressed than I had been when I had left. No wonder the excessive travelling people are becoming obsessive about. They speak about how thrilling it is at a particular airport, airplane model, they post photos of their business class meals, then compare them with another flight’s business class meals...
Maybe that is how normal people are?
Maybe it takes less effort to escape than to work for a life that you don’t need an escape from? Or they haven’t found real validation in their lives? Or want to be more popular? But is that a permanent fix to anything?
