St. Augustine was right."The world is a book," he said, "and those who do not travel read only a page."In the big picture, the planet on which we circle our sun is infinitesimally tiny. From the human perspective, however, it is also incredibly rich in landscape and life forms, wonderfully diverse in philosophy and potential. We owe it to ourselves to explore our home planet at close range.
I often wonder why so many of us limit our explorations to those periodic escapes we call "vacations." Let me be clear. I make a distinction between travel and vacation. To me, travel means interacting personally with the people and culture of another place, inhaling its essence. It does not require great amounts of time and money. It does require an effort greater than lying on a beach or attending the theater.
When it's over, the typical vacation may have produced some brief pleasures, perhaps even enough to offset the pressure of planning it. The sad thing is that so much more is possible.
One of the main reasons people don't travel farther and longer is that they underestimate the wonders waiting for them in the lesser-known world. True travel, like reading a book by an insightful author, can be a life-changing experience. Let's think about what makes travel worth the trouble.
Travel is an opportunity to think of beginnings and endings, to challenge inhibitions, to experience pure joy.
Picture a cheetah bounding across an African savanna. Or the lights of the ships in Hong Kong harbor sparkling like stars in Never-Never Land. Or think of the Sistine Chapel, Inca stonework, China's Li River flowing like liquid jade between ebony mountains.
One of travel's greatest rewards is that of giving us new perspective. Freed from the cocoon of home, a traveler learns how people live in the rest of the world, what they care about. After you've been to Beijing, television coverage of helmeted soldiers beating students to the pavement in Tienanmen Square affects you in ways that people who haven't been there simply cannot appreciate.
As a traveler, you develop a deeper understanding of the strivings of billions of humans, of lives filled with achievement, as well as lives filled from dawn to dusk with hard work and hopelessness. And you realize how much of what you'd accepted as universal truth is based on only the values of the country, even the neighborhood, in which you grew up.
In the fable of the "Blind Men and the Elephant," one blind man puts his arms around the elephant's sturdy front leg and says, "This animal resembles a tree." Another grabs the trunk and insists the elephant is like a giant snake. A third runs his hand along the great flank and declares that, "An elephant is very like a wall." In the same way, it's hard to have an accurate perspective on life when experience is limited to a single culture.
Another reward of travel is exposure to the greatest beauty of man and nature: the architectural brilliance of cathedrals and castles; the breathtaking majesty of the Himalayas. Overflowing with artistic expressions from a dozen cultures, you begin to appreciate the endless facets of beauty.
Traveling responds to the call of special places and special interests. Perhaps you've always wanted to walk the colorful streets of Kathmandu or to return to the 'old country' to see where your ancestors lived. Maybe you've always wanted to sail to Madagascar to seek rare orchids, paddle Peru's Tambopata River in search of nearly extinct birds, or scuba dive along Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Whether it's art, food, Siberian tigers, or just better weather, travel can gratify your special interests.
While on the road, you are summoned neither by a ringing phone nor by a yard waiting to be mowed. Instead, there's time for contemplation, even solitude. Travel provides time for setting new priorities, deciding how to allocate your time when you return.
