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| photo : https://500px.com/jskirschstein |
For me one the things that makes alive the most is travelling .
It always seemed to me that people who neither travelled or travelled very little ( the family of the author of this Blog included ) were very unfortunate and sad individuals .
To go through life , now that we are well in the 21st century , living as a man of the Middle Ages , living and dying in the same , looks to me as a real tragedy .
What will possess an individual living the Global Age of Digitalization which a cheap and varied network of transports to stay planted in the same place , living as a tree , without a single curiosity to the world that goes beyond its limited boundaries ?
Probably the same reason that makes millions of homo sapiens throughout the planet not to pick up a book and read at least a few lines : lack of curiosity .
Lack of curiosity in a species that owes its survival to its compulsive need of discover is another of the many riddles in life that i still have not decipher in life .
No, the economical factor cannot be the reason .
Millions of years ago our ancestors crossed continents just using their feet . Necessity compel them to do so yes , but that fact just confirms that a sedentary existence that provides all the basic needs of the individual makes him passive , complacent with his situation , numbing our sense of curiosity , of adventure that made our species thrive on this Planet .
Having the world displayed on a screen or at the distance of a mere mouse click took our verve to explore this beautiful blue planet of ours .
St Augustine of Hipona once wrote that " a man who doesn`t travel beyond his own land is like a man who reads only the 1st page of a book ".
How shameful the lives of some of my contemporaries is compared with the life of the 14th century Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta who in an age with no airplanes , cars or trains , travelled throughout the entire Muslim world for 20 years , From the his birthplace Morocco to Indonesia !!
To travel is not only a trip to discover the world but also to discover yourself . The Discover levels of tolerance to others and resources of autonomy that you weren`t aware of its existence within you.
Travel makes you leave your comfort zone , break the routine that suffocates you and makes you like Chaplin`s character in the film Modern Times , just a gear , a robot .
As the Swiss London based philosopher Alain de Botton says in his book The art of Travel
“The destination was not really the point. The true desire was to get away—to go, as he concluded, ‘anywhere! anywhere! so long as it is out of the world!”
Out of OUR world.
Travels also feed our imagination . Prevents our minds to rust because at the end of the trip we are richer with new ideas and emotions and boosted with an energy that refuses to accept that we cannot change as our daily environment remains changeless as well.
again de Botton puts its brilliantly ;
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.
At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestice setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are."
So i urge you all , Travel , Travel , Travel !
Dare to cross the boundaries of your village like Samwise Gamjee , even if you do not have the company of a Froddo Baggins
