Traveling isn't simply escaping the world - your job, your circumstance ("life circumstance", as Eckart Tolle calls it). Traveling is listening to the world. The world of the smallest things, first of all, and then of larger ones. And listening is not simple, listening excludes the voice telling you what you what you want to hear. And once you've listened, when you've listened to the actual roads you've traveled, then you cannot return to who you were. It is about learning how to lose oneself. The thing we imagine as the symbol of the greatest concern becomes the meeting point of us and the world. It's our sole opportunity we need to meet the world, see it, to reach out and touch something tangible. Because we already know it, what we know is exactly what we'll never find.
Oh The Places We'll Go
Think of all the wonderful places we can visit:- The Andes Mountains
- Patagonia
- The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
- The Nile River
- The Mediterranean Sea
- The Mancha.
Andes Mountains in Chile. Photo by Irene Lee.
Travelling is like listening to the musical score of a symphony: not just from the perspective of beauty, but also because it doesn't really exist until the musicians perform that score. Even though it's a masterpiece, but what if nobody's listening to it. If there is no one there to hear it, it doesn't exist. It's the same with travel: there are places waiting to be touched and sensed by travelers. They might offer all that you've imagined, or maybe nothing that you've imagined. It's ultimately not about going to one or more specific places, but places that are as random as possible.That's the great thing with travel - the unexpected becomes what we wish for once we're comfortable with it.
