Business or Pleasure?

Some time ago, this was the question posed to international air travelers by customs agents and on immigration forms. It was as if the motives for traveling neatly fit into one of two categories: work or play. We tend to view life this way, too: we are engaged in either occupational pursuits or enjoyable activities.

More recently, however, the question about reasons for travel has been modified to “business or personal?” There seems to be a recognition that the former version did not quite capture all of the possible objectives in taking a trip abroad. A person traveling to a funeral is likely driven by a need to express grief or pay respects; the motive is neither business nor pleasure. Travel may result from a quest for healing at a detox or cancer treatment facility abroad, and that does not check one of the original boxes, either. The personal grouping makes space for more nuanced and varied experiences than simply enjoyment. People travel to learn, fulfill an obligation, escape a negative environment, seek prosperity, engage in a spiritual quest—all deeply personal reasons for embarking on an international journey.

Yet we tend to think in terms of polarized dichotomies: happy or sad, good or evil, productive or useless, successful or failed. This thinking style—often called “black or white thinking”—can lead to a rigid notion of what we allow ourselves to feel, dismissing the subtle and often layered ways that life is actually experienced. We can feel happy about a given outcome and yet wistful over something lost. A new endeavor can be both exhilarating and terrifying and overwhelming all at once. There are myriad personal reasons for doing anything, and many different ways to experience what we choose to do.

Business is business. It connotes transaction, compensation, negotiation, technical skill, and occupational expertise. This may be a self-contained reason for travel. It can also overlap with personal reasons—discovering a new city, for example, or meeting a certain obligation—but pleasure is not the only alternative. In travel or life, personal means something that is private and individual, and it can be good, bad, ugly, or some mix of all three.

We can make space for and validate those motivators and experiences, too, because that is where life happens—in the middle, multi-colored, sometimes confusing ground that holds ambition, excitement, spirituality, learning, caring, healing, grief, and joy. They all respond to the question on the customs form.

They all belong in a life.