Plan Ahead. Don’t Post.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
“The roots of vegetables … attach them fatally to the ground,” the philosopher George Santayana wrote in his 1964 essay “The Philosophy of Travel.” “They are condemned like leeches to suck up whatever sustenance may flow to them at the particular spot where they happen to be stuck.” I don’t know why Santayana was so hateful toward vegetables, but I understand what he means: that to travel is to be fully human.
Clearly, millions of Americans agree: Nearly a quarter say what they most from before the pandemic is travel. Now that COVID-19 case numbers remain low and more than half of American adults are fully vaccinated, the country is with great gusto. In a of 2,000 Americans fielded by Motel 6 this spring, 60 percent of respondents said they have a stronger desire to take a trip this year than.
