TT11: Is travel the answer?

It might not even matter what the question is.

Here on the Thunder, I don’t necessarily go about things straight away. While lightning might be the obvious choice as something powerful and important, I take Thunder because it’s the underdog, maybe the secret weapon and I just like the sound of it–both the word and the real thing.

I like finding answers and maybe then figuring out what the question was. Someone asked me recently how we plan our travel, also as far as budgets and time. I had to think about it because when it comes to travel, I transform from a miserly Uncle Scrooge to a happy-go-lucky-kid-in-the-candy-store boy who doesn’t care how much it costs and I just want the trip to be longer.

“No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear enough. Yes, that’s right, I’m looking for the slowest train from Munich to Prague.” — overheard at the Munich train station, circa 1990.

It’s not that I don’t love being home. Well, I can’t say that I love being home. I’d just rather be on the road. I’m fully of the opinion that we learn more about ourselves and where we’re from when we leave that place and see it from afar. There’s nothing more revealing than shedding the comforts of home to see what lies underneath. The innocent and pure underbelly of who we are when we are not in our comfortable surroundings.

Take politics or war or some other such absurd thing. If a politician or a soldier were required to spend, oh, I don’t know, three months in the shoes of the opposition, might that change his or her perspective? If they could see themselves from the eyes of the other, might they think twice, maybe talk less, listen more and only then act? Might that act then involve more than just what they see, but how others see it and how they see how others see it?

But no. When we don’t travel, we don’t know. We live in the safety of our bubble and don’t even see the need to venture out beyond the known. If there is no input, how can there be output? If we learn nothing of the world around us, how can possibly understand our place in it?

One Travel Myth that will Set You Free

Myth: you have to travel far to truly experience it. 

Travel is more of a mindset than an action. Sure, you move, you go somewhere, but it’s more about where you go to (and leave behind) in your mind, in broadening your imagination, and how your eyes open to see what you have never seen before.

It’s also a matter of not just seeing with your eyes–or at least not the same eyes. Travel improves your vision, heightens your hearing and can even increase your sense of taste, smell, and touch. All you have to do is step out of the known.

It could be around the corner or around the world.

It doesn’t really matter. Head around the corner first and see things through new eyes. Venture further out and experience what you have never experienced before. It all starts with open. Are you open to breaking out of your shell of what you know to expand your mind and deepen your life and your meaning while we are on this earth?

If not, no big deal. Just get out of the way of that guy who’s going to pass you by on his journey of a thousand steps.

But if you are on the path of change, travel might be the answer. Maybe, along the way, you’ll find the question.