This was published 1 year ago
She wants to roam the planet. He wants to stay put and save it. Which argument flies?
My wife loves going on overseas trips, whereas I’m a homebody at heart. And with all the talk of climate change, I feel that we shouldn’t be wasting the planet’s precious resources on recreational travel. But I’m afraid to raise the issue. What should I say?
K.C., Kew, Vic
As I write this, my wife is holidaying on the warm Mediterranean island of Sardinia while I huddle in my wintry Melbourne home in the suburbs. And I’m OK with this; it was my choice. I’m like you: I’m not a big traveller. I don’t sleep well in hotels, I’m not crazy about airplanes, specifically how they go up in the air. But my wife is like your wife: she was bitten by the travel bug – a huge, venomous one that got her right in her worldly, adventure-seeking neck. Me, I got bitten by the un-travel bug: a strange, insipid insect that plods around the house and has really lame dinner-party stories.
Eventually, we worked out a solution that makes us both happy. She regularly travels with a gang of girlfriends and sees the world, enjoys different cultures and eats amazing food while I stay home with the dog and watch crap TV and eat tinned tuna and check our online bank account approximately every 20 minutes, yelling, “Thirty-six euros at Ristorante Gioberti? What about street food? EAT MORE STREET FOOD!”
The time apart is healthy for a relationship, so maybe you and your wife could try it. Encourage her to find some like-minded travel companions and, that way, she’ll get to satisfy all her travel urges. And you’ll get to avoid crowded airports, passport queues, overstuffed hotel pillows and being stuck on an airplane for hours and hours, producing high levels of planet-destroying greenhouse gases. Some coming out of the plane, most coming out of you.
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Danny Katz is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He writes the Modern Guru column in the Good Weekend magazine. He is also the author of the books Spit the Dummy, Dork Geek Jew and the Little Lunch series for kids.