Preface

We live in times of great material wealth and abundance where we have an unprecedented number of options available to us to add convenience to our daily lives. Interestingly, at this same time that we have so many ways to make our lives more comfortable at home, we have actually been spending more and more money on traveling away from home. Although there may be some changes in how and why we travel in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, the psychological needs that travel fulfills are not likely to be greatly altered. Travel is not something we do to get away from our lives, but rather something we pursue to fully embrace life. We may travel a bit differently in the future, but the joy in the memorable experiences it can bring will not be diminished. This is the case whether our trips take us only a few miles away from our homes or halfway around the world.

Because travel is so important to us, I wanted to write a book that would help us better savor the benefits it can provide. I bring my own considerable experience with domestic and world travel to this topic and the opportunities that I have had to live for different periods in a variety of foreign countries. Through these encounters, I have personally witnessed some of the best and the worst that travel has to offer. I have seen how travel can immeasurably improve our lives, and I have observed how truly disastrous some trips can be.

In addition to my personal experience with travel, I also bring to this topic my longtime work as a clinical psychologist and a professor who has taught and done research on what promotes a sense of well-being in life. Through my studies and discussions with students in classroom debates on this topic, I learned that happiness is often derived not from the big things that happen to us in life, but rather from daily, small occurrences that take place and that touch us in some special way. This is true in travel, as well, and we will come back to this idea again and again as we explore what causes our trips to be either joyful encounters or disappointing failures.

In all of this, there will be an appreciation that what we, as travelers, are looking for is not cookie-cutter sameness, but rather something that feels real and vivid that is addressed uniquely to us. This book will examine how we and travel providers alike can work collaboratively to facilitate this goal. When it is achieved, travel can become truly magical.

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