The Grand Tour

Places and personalities can become synonymous.

The idea of The Grand Tour is one that persisted for many centuries, especially in the United Kingdom. On paper the idea seems simple. A rich young noble takes a trip around continental Europe and beyond for an extended amount of time. This gives the 'tourist' an opportunity to sample different cultures, thereby completing their education and acceptance as an adult in the upper class. Of course, in practice, this largely equated to destructive young men roaring through countries experimenting with drugs and sexuality.

I do think that there is some worthwhile merit in this Grand Tour. At the same time I do not condone the subjugation of cultures by rich and reckless children - there is a very good reason that social constructions prevent us from engaging in all of our primal desires. So removing the lascivious elements of the Grand Tour leaves us with an extended trip abroad. Yet I still believe that the Tour has more worth than a simple holiday.

British lords considered the Grand Tour as a completion to sexual education, yet I believe a different type of education is at the core. Living in one country or place for many years gives many obvious benefits like relationship networks, income and security. Yet too much time spent in one place inevitably leads to an over-reliance on the area. A home town becomes a part of a personality and enforces behavioural patterns. These patterns are cemented into a person and become a part of them. In effect, the environment becomes a defining aspect of personality. Perhaps the Grand Tour still has worth as an idea because it forces us to break outside of this environment. We can become closer to understanding the person that we truly are if we remove one external factor.

If we sacrifice the outdated practical use of the Grand Tour a valuable seed remains: fulfilment of our personal education.

-The English Student

Forging Out a Pre-Forged Path

Once again a bus journey has lead me to some introverted thinking.

Rain was streaming down the window in front of me. Pellets of moisture ran from the top right corner to the bottom left as the bus careered through the seasonal storm. As a new droplet hit the window it invariably coursed through a path made by a previous droplet. As I was making my way to work while considering the options of my future, this scene took on a very different meaning for me.

The window pane became a metaphor for life choices. As the rain courses down the window and is funnelled into certain paths, so to are the courses of our own lives. There are specific routes that we will all take that are pre-determined before we even begin life. While at times we can arc off and take a slightly different path, we will end up back at a travelled road before long. It was long in the making that I would take this bus journey and see this pattern on the window.

This post is not intended to rant against the lack of control many of us feel in our life's and rather to point out how ill-equipped we are to deal with it. Many of my friends have really began to struggle with these patterns. When we start in school we are on the first path of life. We go through the motions and follow on to secondary school. We do not make any real life decisions until we consider what to do next. Even then the main life decisions can be deferred if desired. We always desire to defer this decision. So when we face the real world we are lost and do not even have the equipment or practice to make decisions. I do not rant against a lack of control, I rant against a lack of ability to make the most of the limited control we are offered.

So we course down the window, not knowing where we are going and yet knowing that it has already been determined.

-The English Student