What’s In A Word?

The Flag of the Romani People
Image Available at CreativeCommons.org

Since not too many people have read my blog yet, this name change won’t mean too much to anyone other than me. Still, it seems noteworthy that the single word “Traveller” connotes significantly more, while utilizing 75% less verbiage, than the lengthier title “Education and the Nation.” The original blog title implies topical limitations and hints at a singular focus on a particular country, the United States of America. 

While I admire “America the Beautiful” for countless reasons, I take issue with the collective egoism that allows us to call America “The Greatest Nation on Earth.” To prove that statement, one would need to define the parameters of greatness.  From my vantage point, America would fall frighteningly short of true greatness, impaling itself upon a gargantuan sword along the way. (I’ll try to return to a definition of greatness in the near future.)

The first time I told my father “I am not an American; I am a citizen of the world,” I was about eight or nine years old. His outrage was dumbfounding. Of course, neither of us had any idea who Socrates was.  I just knew that everywhere the pages of National Geographic took my imagination, I wanted to travel there someday.  The whole wide world — no matter how small, after all — was infinitely interesting.  ”So, why should I limit myself to an All-American Life” thought my child-mind? 

Little did I know that I might be genetically predisposed to an itinerant lifestyle — or what genetics meant, for that matter. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, and scores of cousins — the people I associated with unconditional love during my childhood — were literally Romanichel, the Roma, or Gypsies. Until I was 13, I thought this meant we were from Romania. Then, I heard we were from England.  Years and dozens of hours of research later, I learned that our clan was more accurately a mix of Scottish and English Travellers with a few Turks joining the fold through marriage in recent years. About 1000 years ago our ancestors left the mountainous region of Northern India, near Punjab, apparently to avoid outcomes associated with belonging to a servant caste.

Traveller: The word alludes to the perseverence of a passionate people. Traveller: The word implies infinite possibility and few limitations, thereby giving me more to write about. Traveller: Whether by foot or imagination, the word suggests a life and a world without borders. That is why I changed the name of this blog. I find the word “Traveller” inspiring beyond measure.