Reflections on the Abiding Importance of Travel, Even in Uncertain Times
February 27, 2009
Guest Blog: Don George
In his wonderful, seminal essay “Why We Travel,” Pico Iyer writes: “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and be taken in, and fall in love once more.”
Pico wrote these words almost a decade ago. A month ago, another friend and fellow traveling writer, Tom Cole, put the same issue in a different perspective in the adventure travel newsletter “Ultima Thule”. Tom gave four reasons “why we travel, rain or shine”:
“First,” he wrote, “we figure that if we’re going to spend money, we might as well enrich ourselves. And there’s hardly a better path to enrichment than on the road. Second, we believe strongly that travel offers a magnificent return on investment. Third, travel is a nearly matchless way to bond with family and friends old and new. And fourth: travel, rain or shine, is the highest form of re-creation. As soon as you lock the door and get in the car to drive to the airport, you are who you want to be.”
Both these world-wanderers express exactly how I feel about travel: Even when the world is uncertain and unsettled, travel is too important to put on hold. The stakes, both personal and global, are too high.
Personally, there is nothing like travel to renew us, grace us with knowledge and perspective, and forge ties that bind around the world. Globally, there are so many countries, cultures and economies that depend on travel—not just economically but artistically, philosophically – that to stop travelling is to abandon them to almost inevitable disruption and degeneration.
Travel has blessed me with the greatest riches of my life: from my wife, whom I met while living in Japan, to the spiritual underpinnings and epiphanies of Notre Dame, the Acropolis, Ryoanji and Uluru. The kindness of strangers that I encounter on the road has transformed and continues to transform my sense of the potentials of the planet to evolve toward peace and mutually assured construction.
Travel is a fundamentally enriching and renewing activity. It is good for the mind and the soul and the heart. It is good for the people we meet, the societies we support, and the lessons we give and receive.
As the economic down-spirals of the past few months have so indelibly illustrated, we are all interconnected. The flip side of this is the exclamatory revelation at the heart of the travel adventure: We are all interconnected!
Travel renews our sense of the essential and the possible – two lessons in clarity we dearly need now. This is why I’m determined to keep travelling and why I’m urging others to keep travelling too: The world is at once too large and too small for us to stay mired in one place. As stewards of the planet, from the peoples of its urban jungles to its wildest unpeopled expanses, we are at our best – and the Earth is at its best—when we engage with the world.
Posted by Jane Gregg 7 Comments
Next entry: Madrid Revisited
Previous entry: Tasting & Talking Your Way Through Spain & Italy
1Shanky- massachusets personal injury lawyer | April 3, 2009
Nice posting,very informative.Thank you, very interesting to read, you should be proud of your blog. I was really enjoying to check your messages from time to time. We are looking forward to your future posts.