Do we live for keychains?

Once when I was riding a public minibus stuck in the usual traffic, I saw a young woman with a city name souvenir keychain dangling from her backpack, standing in the middle and holding onto the railings among other passengers.

I just thought it’s somehow strange that there are people who go to many beautiful, tourist-attracting places, stay at luxurious hotels feeling all VIP for several nights, experience an expensive plane ride, and spend thousands of money on a foreign, faraway land, just to come home again to a routine of riding crowded, hot public vehicles, roaming trash-littered streets, and living on the same economically deranged, third world country once the vacation is over.

And those same people are continuously meant to repeat the cycle of passing tedious, boring days hoping and waiting for another glimpse of a long-awaited trip while looking and posting take-me-back photos in the meantime.

Was that really the point of vacation? And leisure? And traveling?I don’t think I understand it at the same molecular level as those people highly engaged in it. Just like how staying in a peaceful, high-rated hotel feels seemingly odd when I know how everything outside looks. Though in all honesty, it does cancel every unnecessary noise of the world. Letting you live for a moment where nothing else seems to matter aside from you and your little man-made paradise with an expiration day.

This made me realize that most people around are chasing travel after travel these days. Always on the go like hungry little beasts when seat sales open. Booking a new city after every city. Planning the next trip even before going home from the recent one.

Why, though? Or better to ask, is that why?

Is it plainly because of the real fulfillment of dreams, curiosity, adventure, and new experiences, or is it a mere symptom of a gradually declining society where people run as fast as they can so reality can’t catch up?

Because when you’re away from your usual life, the sky looks bluer, the air feels warmer, and your mind becomes clear for some reason. But isn’t that proof that your normal life is no better at all? And you’re just dreaming of being always away, living somewhere else far, to escape what you don’t want to live with. If that’s so, isn’t that set up the most tiring act of all? Living most of your life waiting for something instead of living it? Isn’t that worse than being stuck in the worst traffic jam in the world?

I was only introduced to the concept of vacations and traveling when I started working. I thought all people do it because they want to explore, experience, feel, and immerse themselves in places and have a false nostalgia of being somewhere they’ve never been to, but still being able to connect with it. Yet the more I observe people of various generations, more often than not, and probably because of the influence of social media and its downsides, they think of it as a mere chance to flaunt riches, a mere day to go and visit a different place for a change with a bonus of having great smiling, intricately angled photos to dump online while knowing their social media acquaintances are envious of their ability to afford such lifestyle.I guess if some internet people would just be brutally honest, their comments, instead of words of affirmation and all the nice things, would be: I am not interested at all. I don’t care where you went. I don’t care about the mountains you hiked, the oceans you swam, the restaurants you’ve eaten at, and your group photos with people whose last names you don’t even know.But then again, who knows? At the end of the day, everyone has their reasons for doing what they’re doing, for saying what they’re saying, and for going to where they’re going.That’s why people fascinate me. I’ve always thought about why they act the way they do. Yet no matter what I do, I always get stuck, like the never-ending traffic in Metro Manila, like the ridiculous cycle of the modern generations’ travel and normal life set up, at the same answer—that there is no answer at all. People have different things in mind that drive them and they just live the way they want. It’s almost tangibly impossible to try and fit everyone into a single unifying conclusion.

And the best I can do now, just like all the bored, dangling, unsold, and dusty keychains displayed in a lonely souvenir shop with seasonal customers, is to constantly wonder—do some people actually live just to collect keychains they don’t even need?

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Rain, 25, asks the void too much and thinks it has grown tired of her. It doesn’t answer her anymore or even stare back at all.