A Criteria for Prioritizing Destinations: The Most Martin Thing I've Ever Done

I'm WAY too excited about a criteria I created! I'm not sure if anyone should have excitement over criteria or organization but I love it and I'm sharing this criteria (via my blog to my faithful readers)!

A couple of months ago I created a four point criteria to use when prioritizing travel destinations. I wrote down four criteria to define what I find rewarding in a destination based on previous travels and to help prioritize where I want to travel next.

I felt the list illuminated why some destinations attract me more than others and it ultimately illuminated what I seek in life through experiences such as travel. But, it also illuminates my type of crazy.

Before I shared the specific criteria points, my friend Kevin immediately interrupted my announcement to him and said "That's the most you thing you've ever done." 

He's right. It is a very me thing to do. It's a very me thing to consider travel, where rewards often arise from supreme serendipity, and impose my rigid way of thinking to how I consider a destination.

Make no mistake: serendipity and in the moment discoveries have generated much reward in my travels and life. But developing this criteria helped me realize what I love most about travel. I think it helped me separate myself from a perception of travel as "getting away from it all" or "it's a thing you do." For me, travel is a way for me to extend my love of narratives. It's an extension of what I love in movies and books. The world is my library. 

But libraries are daunting with so much to choose from. So I like knowing a bit about why I choose a place or what I find rewarding in a vacation to understand what attracts me to a new narrative. 

The Criteria

The criteria for prioritizing destinations:

1. Jules Verne reward - places that enable me to feel like an adventurer, but not just in lost civilizations. I'll explain later. 
2. Star Wars reward - places that make me feel like I'm in a science fiction world, most likely in a Star Wars movie or book. In other words, it feels other worldly or futuristic. 
3. History nerd reward - places that reward my love of history. Pretty simple.
4. Food reward - I like to eat really tasty food. Pretty simple. 

Did I Need to Do This?

Did I need to write this at all?

No.

But I found this list helpful. Organization provides clarity and this list provided clarity for me. It's less a list of how I'm supposed to travel than a reflection of what I already love. Most destinations I've loved don't quite cover all four criteria yet I relish the simplicity in which it reflects lifelong pursuits of knowledge. 

Traveling serves as a more intensive and immersive opportunity for knowledge. Ultimately, reading a book or watching a movie isn't the same as being in a place. Traveling provides what a book cannot replicate. It extends my knowledge on a more sensory level. It's one thing to see a picture of a French bakery and an entirely different but connected thing to smell a French bakery. 

Experience allows us to construct more useful knowledge. I'm the kind of person who would rather learn by doing - a method I learned to do the hard way after anxiety and over thinking (my prior mode) led me to do nothing. Travel allows knowledge by doing. 

A Narrative Rarely Shared

A particularly hard to define criteria for me was the Jules Verne criteria. What does that mean? At first I thought that meant finding "lost" or "adventure story-worthy" places, but that wasn't quite it. No - it's about the discovery of a narrative rarely shared. 

I remember my 10th grade World History class hardly touching on the history of Asia, Africa, South America, and other places not connected to Europe and Euro-American events. This bothered me: we learned the historical narrative that relates to less than 2 billion people on a planet that currently hosts 7-8 billion! That's a huge narrative missing!

I asked the teacher why and her rebuttal was that we didn't have enough time: "Research and read about it on your own."

I think defining the Jules Verne criteria led me to understand I've always had a lifelong pursuit of narratives missing. I don't like things missing - it's a puzzle without pieces and my brain doesn't like that. It also diminishes the humanity of a world that has more people than the entirety of Europe or North America combined. 

I want to know this narrative. Hence, the Jules Verne criteria. I love the novels of Jules Verne as he deals with characters discovering the less known or forgotten narratives of Earth.

This isn't just history either. For instance, it wasn't until I travelled to Japan that I really saw Shintoism and Buddhism in a deeper, more meaningful way. It was never part of any meaningful discourse in my education yet visiting Meiji Shrine proved a more rewarding experience than the Eiffel Tower because the narrative it produced sparked new knowledge and a new sense of seeing the world. This was a cultural narrative rarely shared.

Missing

There's no one way to travel. Travel means discovery and immersion, but the way that happens for each of us depends on a lot of factors. 

For me, what I ultimately find isn't necessarily what I was searching for, but I create this criteria to understand what I can search for and what will enable me to fulfill the lifelong pursuit of personal development and better understanding of a world I barely understand.