“Journeys are the midwives of thought…” This phrase immediately stuck out to me, and put words to an experience I have had many times. In fact the whole of chapter two in The Art of Travel was maybe the chapter I related to the most. It first stuck out to me when de Botton speaks about his pleasant kind of loneliness that he is experiencing in the gas station as he is eating his snack; I too can identify with that kind of feeling. De Botton goes on to say that because he was in a place of strangers where the architecture and lighting seemed to acknowledge and reflect the loneliness of the place; coupled with the absence of people who would cause contrasts with happiness and togetherness in the room, he says that it makes the loneliness pleasant. This was a perfect explanation of this feeling to me. I always thought when I feel this pleasant loneliness it is because I am feeling comforted by the fact that other people are also alone, and that people are not all that different. It provides me a kind of connection with the rest of the human race. De Botton even speaks to this idea later in the chapter, when he is speaking about the painting Gas and says “Against the backdrop of night and wild woods, in this last outpost of humanity, a sense of kinship may be easier to develop than in daylight in the city.” Actually, his whole description of gas was incredibly relatable to me. Before I lived in Olympia and would drive back and forth from Seattle, I took great joy in the drives I would have late at night when few cars were on the road. I liked to stop at empty gas stations that were still, and had only me or one other person standing in silence, both doing the exact same task. These drives back and forth also brought me back to the original passage “Journeys are the midwives of thought…” because, as de Botton goes on further he helped to change my view, he says “thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks — charred with listening to music, for example, or following a line of trees.” What this changed was my perception of the drives that I will be going on to and from Seattle and Olympia during this research project. Before reading this section, I thought of this drive as a hassle, however, now it sounds like a great opportunity for me to use this time to take in whatever I learned during the day, and form solid ideas out of it. This also inspired me to look into taking the train from Seattle to Olympia or Portland a few times. I think these train rides would be an inspiring journey, but also give me time useful for me to write about my experiences.

In chapter four, de Botton speaks about his time in Madrid and his struggle to figure out what he is suppose to do with his time there. This is a fear that I have about my time in Seattle. My struggle is, I used to live in Seattle, and  I am worried that when I go back to do research things will not inherently capture my attention or seem interesting. Yes, I will have a research question, and yes there are things that I have planned out to do, but, because I used to live there I am concerned about how I will see the city and events. When talking in about his time in Madrid, De Botton said “My discoveries would have to enliven me; they would have in some way to prove ‘life enhancing.’” Now I do believe that this entire project project is “life enhancing,” as it gives me an opportunity to learn about a place I love, however what I want to know (as does de Botton in madrid) is “How does a person come to be interested in the exact height at which he or she sees a fly?” For me the fly is Seattle and I need to figure out how best to become more interested in a place that I feel I already know so much about. I think the best ways for me to achieve this, is for me to branch out and do the things I have never have done as a inhabitant. I need to become a tourist in my own city in a sense (maybe go up in the space needle for the first time and hear the sounds of the city from there.) De Botton decides he is interested in the under representation of vegetables in the spanish diet, and the size of spanish men’s feet; something I doubt the people of Madrid ever questioned. I have decided to find things that trigger a fascination in me, things that I may have never even thought to look at or listen to.