Don’t Go There!: From Chernobyl to North Korea—One Man’s Quest to Lose Himself and Find Everyone Else in the World’s Strangest Places

by Adam Fletcher

I remembered an article I’d recently read that said whatever first attracted you to a partner was always the thing you resented most at the end.

History is what happens when ego meets happenstance.

Chernobyl was a watershed moment in human hubris.

“I’m also planning to create a Procrastination Party. I just didn’t quite get around to it yet.”

The group warbled their way through some terrible Oasis covers followed by some terrible Beatles covers then some terrible eighties covers and then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it rained men.

“Who orders a quadruple rum and coke? That’s not a thing.” “In Transnistria it is thing.”

Boredom is a luxury good. This simple statement dug its claws into me and didn’t let go. Of course. I’d lost sight of the extraordinary privilege inherent within boredom. Most people in the world don’t get to decide whether or not to engage in politics. Don’t feel so safe and secure and bored that they actively go out looking for danger, just to feel more alive.

People who aren’t self-reflective in their everyday lives don’t magically uncover new modes of thought or hidden depths of understanding just because they swap Home for Rome or Gloucester for Gabon.

I hadn’t realised then that the only way you know that something has value is if you find yourself willing to make sacrifices for it.

As humans, we’re constantly working to try to make sense of ourselves, to try to neaten our histories. We’re our stories, nothing more.

I glanced at the whiteboard, where I’d scrawled “Boredom is a luxury good” in green pen.