Therapy from Around the World

I’m not usually a coffeetable-book person.

It always just seems a bit pretentious and overly curated, like Martha Stewart or one of the staging experts on some HGTV show required them to be there, collecting dust, to impress guests, but never to be moved or touched. Plus, they’re heavy and cumbersome, the opposite of downsizing or living a minimalist lifestyle.

Yet, today on my coffee table lives a book that isn’t there for display, but for actual use and inspiration: Lonely Planet’s bulky, simply named, The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World.

Let me be clear, I love this book, but not perhaps for the reason most would expect. 

Sure, the pictures are exquisite and phenomenal. The imagination runs wild, plotting that globetrotting adventure or pondering those exotic locales to check off the ever-growing bucket list. 

But for me, that’s not what it’s about. Instead, it’s this – the level playing field. 

Every country in the world – every, single, one – gets the same amount of real estate – two pages. Only two measly pages! Yep, the United States gets the same two-page prominence as Tuvalu, or say, Togo, as they tell you highlights of each nation. Oh France, you may be a nonstop tourist destination, but sorry, try again, you only rate the same two pages as Serbia, Honduras or Moldova.

And this simple concept? It calms and resets the mind.

You’d think it would have the opposite effect, right? A book presenting every country in the world is overwhelming, a banquet feast of places to visit and a reminder that you’ll never, ever have enough time in life. Look at all you’re potentially missing out on! Also, all those religions, those conflicts, those ways of life we may not understand.

But for me, it’s all about perspective, perspective, perspective, and I had this realization the first time my eyes scanned a previous printing of The Travel Book in the back corner of some Barnes & Noble. There I sat awkwardly on the floor, trying to balance this admittedly cumbersome tome on my lap, and the pages flipped open to the country Chad, featuring a stunning picture of like 250 camels, and some handlers, just hanging out in some watery gorge, seeking shade from the sun. 

And my first thought, instantly? 

“These people don’t give a CRAP about Kim Kardashian!!”

They don’t know or care about our red and blue states.

And they certainly don’t give a RAT’S ASS! if the newest $1,500 iPhone is selling out. 

In this shady desert scene, these lovely people (and the camels) don’t give a moment’s thought to the must-see movie jammed down our throats, the latest meme clapping back at some political candidate, or that Tesla stock that’s way down. 

And that just made me giddy with joy, a stop-in-your-tracks moment where I was reminded of our media’s power in shaping our hourly worries and emotions. Our mood. Our focus. Our headspace. And that there are other ways to live. We are all products of our environment, what our society places importance on.

A few days later, (after purchasing the book), a friend was visiting. First topic? His concerns with the retirement plan and 401(k) considerations. Should he maybe refinance the house, or try this dividend-paying stock? Knowing he appreciated travel, I grabbed my now-favorite coffee table book and flipped to the page for Nambia, featuring a solo climber ascending a gloriously golden-orange sand dune, then the page with teens learning a folk dance in Slovakia. And we both wondered aloud, “Do these people constantly worry like we do?”

The U.S. Only. Gets. Two. Pages. 

We are ALL here on this planet.

There’s none of this first-world, third-world designation here. No perception that the Northern Hemisphere countries are somehow better than those in the Southern Hemisphere. The smiling residents of Chile and French Polynesia seem just as content as the hipsters in Estonia or those Turkish women.

Do these world citizens have worries? Oh, plenty. For some, it’s more life-and-death, hand-to-mouth than anything most Americans can imagine. But the American perspective or way of thinking is only a blip on this planet of world experiences. And in this time of 24/7 news cycles, former friends trolling one another on social media, and Madison Avenue reminding you of all the ways your life is second-rate, I require this reminder, almost daily – that those guys in the drum circle on page 46, Belize, have their thoughts on simpler things at this very moment. That guy wrangling dusty horses on page 422, Uruguay? He has an interior life I can’t pretend to know. I want to hang with that gaucho from Costa Rica.

And it calms me from feeling like I have to solve all the world’s stresses and problems. 

For sure, other books are better equipped to help you plan a trip, logistically, but The Travel Book is my welcome distraction, my down the rabbit hole, my through the looking glass – keeping everything in perspective as I disappear into colorful dance and festivals, religious pilgrimages, volcanic vistas, and, truth be told, ordinary life, laborious work and joys and worries that are distinctly not American. Instant sanity and peace, for me, and an ability to question assumptions and ponder other options. 

Aaaah. As long as the content, smiling woman in a field (with her sheep!) is there to greet me on page 226, Lesotho, going forward, I suppose I’ll have to live with being a coffeetable-book person.