The airports are jammed, the roads are bogged down and even sea routes become a chore as mass migration happens all over the world. Naturally, taking part in this experience is enough to make anyone nervous. When you couple this with the volatile weather that constantly threatens to disrupt holiday travelling the whole situation becomes a bit of a nightmare.
But I wonder if travelling anxiety is not something that is felt all year. There is something very unsettling about travelling, particularly travelling by air. You arrive at an airport, get in a plane and arrive at another airport. The movement while in the plane seems virtual. You can look through a window but at times this is more analogous to a television screen. The sights from an airport window are so unusual in our daily lives as to make them unbelievable. So, instead of a more tangible or usual journey by car or bus, plane journeys feel like teleportation devices that require you to sit in one room for a set period of time depending on where you are being teleported to.
This form of travel breaks up our internal spatial map. This is not helped by the factory packed, generic look of airports that is common around the world. We enter an airport, exit another and suddenly realise that we are in a different country. Surely the real anxiety of plane travel is the fear that it is not actually taking place. We must be naturally cautious that the whole process is a ruse or sleight of hand and that our understanding of the planet is absolutely false.
While none of this will comfort me while travelling tomorrow, it may make my travelling anxiety more cerebral and thus more tolerable.
-The English Student
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