Port Aransas = The Awakening?

I love how traveling can reawaken, or be inspired by, or be in response to something I’ve read or seen or heard before, often without me even knowing. There’s a way my past experiences have of creeping up on me without warning to validate or invigorate a current experience. I had one of these surprise moments on my recent trip to Port Aransas.

I was wading out into the gulf while my friends stayed on the beach. The sun was setting. The coast was desolate. I was alone with the waves and the sky, and it was a peaceful, lovely moment. And as I laid back on the waves and felt the pull of the ocean upon my body, my mind recalled The Awakening, a beautiful and heartbreaking story by Kate Chopin of a woman trapped by society’s expectations of what her life as a woman must be. I floated in the water thinking as if I were Edna in the final scenes of the story. I don’t want to spoil the book for those who haven’t read it, so you should stop reading this now, go read the book, and come back. It’s a beautiful book. Go read it. It’s really short, if that helps.

I floated on the water, completely alone, and imagined myself as Edna more than a century ago. What pressures she endured everyday as a wife and mother, a life partially of her choosing and partially not. What hopes and dreams she harbored, however nascent and unfulfilled, that she strove toward. And then I thought of the life I am leading and how unlike hers it is, even though we both found ourselves floating in the Gulf of Mexico and contemplating our lives.

I’m a strong swimmer. That was on my mind as I had these thoughts. I imagined what it would take to swim so far out that I was exhausted, far enough to know I could never make it back. I thought about what it would take to make myself keep swimming farther as my limbs became heavier. I thought about what my life would need to be to keep swimming away and away and away from it, knowing I was using all of my strength to push myself beyond that life and beyond any life at all, because I saw no better life.

And then I thought about how I have absolutely no motivation to do that and how the hell did I become so much freer than Edna? I thought about all the women who had to suffer and struggle for me to be able to feel such a disconnect from that choice being my best, my only, option. I thought about all the human beings who had to endure lives worse than Edna’s to progress humanity to the bare minimum of recognizing each other’s rights to live freely (and how we’re not even at that bare minimum yet). Because a struggle for gender equality must always recognize that as bad as white women have historically had it, it’s been a cakewalk comparatively. (As long as you’re not comparing it to white men. No offense, dudes, but you know it’s true.)

To be an independent woman living a life of my own choosing sounds so obvious and not even worth mentioning today. But floating in the gulf, thinking Edna’s thoughts, brought home how many people have had to suffer, not for women, but for all people (race, sex, gender, religion, the full gamut) to maybe, possibly, one day be able to live lives of their choosing­—and it was truly humbling. Because I know mine is not a universal experience, even within the United States, let alone the world. There are still Ednas of all races and genders swimming out as far as their strength can take them away from every shore in the world, to escape persecution and a life not worth coming home to.

Travel isn’t always fun and games. Sometimes it’s learning and remembering the privilege I have in life and the debt I need to repay for those still suffering. But whatever way I look at it, I see the deep value of traveling.