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Postcards and Pearls :: Introduction
INTRODUCTION
The first time I traveled solo I was 16 years old. It was only
to the movie theater but I was at an age when who you hang with
– or don’t – defines you in the eyes of the
crowd. I wanted to see the movie Orca. My friends didn’t.
I agonized over missing the film. After a few hours I thought,
To heck with it; I’m going alone.
I chewed my nails during the entire bus ride to the theater,
worried that the ticket clerk might pity me when I said, “One,
please,” or that groups of moviegoers would assume I had
no friends. The truth is no one gave me a second look. The world
thinking I was a loser for going to the movies by myself existed
only in my mind.
The lights dimmed and the projector rolled. Afterward, as moviegoers
streamed out of one showing and filed in for the next, I nestled
into my seat and thought, I can sit here all day if I want
to.
I gleefully watched Orca twice.
Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship
had been a mandate for life’s good times. After Orca,
it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish
between loneliness (experienced by default), and solitude (choosing
when and how to enjoy my own company), as I began a journey of
engaging the world on my own terms. Over the years, that journey
deepened as I traveled life’s roads with increasing independence
and confidence, whether I was attending graduate school at night
while working during the day, buying my first house or changing
careers.
Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the
Road celebrates this journey of joy, discovery and personal
evolution. Through 118 “postcards,” I, along with
17 other women, share stories of traveling on our own. By depending
on ourselves – whether we encountered new pleasures, navigated
old fears or teetered on the edges of comfort – each experience
taught us transformative lessons or “pearls” of wisdom
that we carried back home.
In these pages, traveling “solo” does not necessarily
mean “alone.” The absence of other people often suggests
regretful isolation. “Solo” by contrast, is a willful
decision to be the architect of our own experience. On the road,
that might mean being completely on our own, hiring a guide, joining
a group of people we’ve never met before, or carving out
solo time while traveling with family or friends. Off the road,
it could mean visiting a museum or attending a play or workshop
in our own company.
In Postcards and Pearls, you’ll meet Kerry, a
college professor who writes, “I spent most of one summer
involved in other people’s activities. But when I traveled
with my parents and one of my sisters to Martha’s Vineyard
for a week, I finally figured out a way to be alone.
“At the end of one of the main streets in Vineyard Haven
is a massage center. This street is usually crowded with tourists
shopping for jewelry, books or Vineyard artwork. The sidewalk
ends at the massage center, causing most tourists to turn around.
I took this as an invitation – no, as confirmation –
that things could only get better. Inside the center, the cool
conditioned air was enough to make me pay the owner. They scheduled
me for the next day, just after lunch. It was great to say to
my parents and my sister, ‘I have plans. See you all later.’
Surprise, surprise, they had plans, too. I was delighted that
they didn't care…”
You’ll also hear from Marita who writes, “I am not
a solitary person. As the mother of four children [and] wife of
37 years, there have been few times in my life when I have done
anything alone. And, for the most part, I have loved it that way.”
But later in life, Marita’s job as a university department
head required that she travel solo regularly during her marriage.
Then, she became a widow. “How fortunate I am that I began
to take these steps before my husband died,” Marita continues.
“I doubt I would have been able to begin this new way of
being and doing after the devastation of such a loss.”
And Jan, an author and researcher, writes about her solo weekend
while married with children: “I was a 40-something wife
and mother, working and going to school part time. And, I was
weary. I needed to get away and, for the first time, I did not
consider asking a relative or friend to come with me…traveling
solo was the beginning of an amazing off-road journey. I became
less fearful, willing to take more risks, which soon gave me the
confidence to take on new and bigger challenges. When a business
acquaintance asked me to help with seminars that her company was
conducting, I was able to put aside my fear of public speaking,
which eventually lead to an exciting new career.”
The gift of solo moments is that they are wholly ours. On or
off the road, solo moments connect us inward to ourselves with
heightened clarity and insight. They also direct our energies
out into the world, magnetizing us to new people and experiences
we may not have encountered under any other circumstance.
Whether the journeys you take are from Wisconsin to Sri Lanka
or from “I can’t” to “I can,” I
hope that the “postcards” in this book enliven the
possibilities within your imagination while the “pearls”
embolden your life at home in new and challenging ways.
Gina Greenlee
Hartford, Connecticut
January 2008 |
