Mexico: Thoughts on Tourism
Tornos
Awwwe, tourism. A loaded word. Most of the time I hear people using the term excluding themselves, ‘those tourists’ ‘overrun with tourists’ even while they are traveling. It is as if they are somehow not a tourist or as if there were different categories of tourists in which they did not belong to. In the negative, ‘those tourists’ tends to be synonymous with crowds, trash, long wait times, consuming or even rude, pushy, entitled people. Tourism defined by the dictionary comes in a rather singular dimension.
tourism[ toor-iz-uhm ] the activity or practice of traveling around from place to place, especially for pleasure.
Dig deeper, says the voice of curiosity.
The original Greek which the word stems from is TORNOS or, circle, circumference. Interesting. A journey that comes full circle. Full circle in what? A distance from one point to another, idea to another, time to another? Perhaps all of the above. Tornos, the father of a global concept that is a journey through the different parts of a country, region in which you go to see and learn about with the intention of returning to your point of origin…Ok, so is that tourism today?
Dig deeper…
TIME. The they them of tourism. They, well they come, then they go. Tourists NEVER being able to integrate or become a local. Integration is a lifelong venture in which time is integral. How much time must pass for the individual no longer to be considered a tourist? This is getting difficult.
Dig deeper…
SPACE. I can travel fifteen minutes from my home and be called a tourist. I live in the county, but I don’t live on that block. I don’t know what it’s like to live there or because of what makes me different—I do not speak, think or have similar mannerisms that people do in a particular neighborhood, zone, region, county, state, province—makes me tourist. Regardless of empathy, I will never know what its really like to grow up where Fatu or Terry, Juan or Joe, Xi or Anne, Margret or Pavitra, Omar or Sven, lived. Within such a context that makes everyone a tourist? Space matters though if tourism is a journey coming full circle to a point of origin.
Dig deeper…
MATTER. Perhaps the truth is that we are all tourists in this world. The human race is on a very short journey as we walk the earth occupying space and possessing rest mass. A small blip. Regardless of where we go, what race, religion, creed, background, age, culture, sexuality, minority, income, environment, life story, unknown demographics to come… nothing could ever be fully listed…people are always reinventing themselves and perhaps are even tourists in their own bodies! A body that is ever transforming energy generating and decaying over time. Whoa.
Dig deeper…
Ok, tourism, the journey. Perhaps the meaning is up to you…be wise, its more than traveling through time, space and matter. More than a journey from one point to another, and definitely more than traveling around from place to place especially for pleasure.
