“Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward. “

John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley

I recently reread this book and liked it much more than I can remember liking it as a High School summer reading requirement. Perhaps because there was no essay required when I finished?

Travel exposes one to things unknown. And, for that reason, I don’t think it is so bad that American’s like to tell others about their travel afterward! If you can tell, then certainly you saw something, right?

Travels with Charlie was written in the early 1960s but is incredibly current – especially the last few chapters which are a sad portrait of race relations in the US.

Maybe we should all be like Charley:

“Once Charley feel in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically rediculous and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.”

Please, let’s be our best selves and ‘try dogfully’ to love each other despite or because of our differences.