The promise of travel

Travel is an iterative process of experiencing, ruminating, and growing – with the growth often occurring long after we’ve returned from our adventures.  Through the sites and sounds and smells of the unfamiliar we test our assumptions and lose the loosest notions of our long-held beliefs.  In leaving the familiar we willingly leave behind who we are for a time.  By embracing the promise of travel, we embrace the unknown in ourselves and in the world:  we are able to trim the mental fat and make room for alternate world-views and novel ideas, for new foods and cultures and language and experiences.   You could call it gaining perspective and you wouldn’t be wrong, but I find it much simpler than that.  It’s adding flavor to the core of our being and, to be sure, our core, who we truly are, isn’t altered by vagabonding but instead is enhanced and drawn out through travel; the artist is inspired, the businessman sees opportunity, the adventurous finds challenges and the lovers feel romanced.   By shedding pounds of preconceived notions about the world, its peoples, and our place in relation to them, we are undertaking a  journey of the utmost significance.  This is the promise of travel; a literal and figurative exploration of both self and of the world with the discovery being a unique experience to all.